The Ephyran War Hymns
by HyperSoft
Summary: War is immense; endless as the sky it rages under. A Gear's life is trivial by comparison, little more than a finite sum of years. But years are made of moments: for some soldiers, those moments can be more powerful than even the bloodiest battles. [Back from hiatus]
1. I: Non Populus, Part One

**The Ephyran War Hymns  
><strong>

_Disclaimer: Clearly, I don't own Gears of War or its characters in any shape or form. Everything belongs to Epic Games.  
>All lyrics, as posted in short, are the intellectual property of their respective artists.<br>_

_This body of work is rated T for language and mature themes. Might get bumped up to M along the way, though I appreciate any feedback on how I rate my work.  
><em>

_—_

This is a collective of shorter, mostly unrelated pieces (some in multiple parts) focusing on smaller, but no less pivotal moments in the lives of Gears, mostly Marcus Fenix, Dominic Santiago, and Anya Stroud.

All stories were inspired by songs or song lyrics, one way or another. If you're curious which ones, you need only google the chapter names or introductory quotes. ;)

_The Hymns_ will be updated and built upon as the mood strikes me; a permanent work-in-progress into which I shall pour my feverish love for the Gears universe. If a story starts getting too long (upwards of three parts) I'll probably break it off and publish it separately.

_—_

**Spoiler Alert:**  
><strong>II. Bruise<strong> contains mild spoilers for the **Barren **comic story arc.  
><strong>IV. Halycon<strong> contains major spoilers for **Aspho Fields**.

_—_

And lastly, a huge _thank you_ to everyone who has read, reviewed, favourited, and/or alert'd. Even the fact that you took the time to read an Author's Note down this far warms my heart.

((Concrit is encouraged and very much appreciated))

* * *

><p><strong>I.<br>Non Populus  
><strong>(Part One)

_tell me, will I dream?  
>and tell me, will it be serene?<em>

Nearly chewing through her full, pale lips, Anya Stroud tried her hardest not to snatch Dom's hand and crush it with the wild weight of her anxiety.

"This is crazy. Why are they taking so long?" The lieutenant's voice was stretched like an overtuned violin string. "They were supposed to arrive forty-five minutes ago."

"Forty-eight," Dom glanced up from the scratched face of his watch and leaned forward to stare down the street before them, its once-smooth face scarred by frag explosions and old emergence holes. The past decade had etched an unfair amount of pre-mature lines into the Gear's face, but in the weak orange light of Ephyra's barely-functioning street lamps, they seemed to have doubled in number and depth in the last hour alone. Silently, Anya reminded herself that he was just as emotionally invested in this early morning as she was. Maybe even more so.

"Maybe they've been delayed..."

"Maybe." Dom jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. "But you'd think _they'd_ know."

Following the gesture, Anya saw that a crowd of men and women had amassed by the doors of the large, squat terminal building behind them. Roughly a third of the group was buttoned up in dark, slightly tattered suits; the others were lightly armoured, holding their sidearms on casual display. The lieutenant raised a slender brow; she had been too absorbed in the emotional war raging inside her to even notice them.

"Looks like they're going to try to rip through the official pardon paperwork right on location," Dom ventured, eyes narrowed at the silent crowd. "Not that Hoffman's been overly concerned about legal formalities since E-Day."

Neither one said it, but they were both thinking the same thing: for the past week, the Jacinto Maximum Security Penitentiary had been experiencing increased pressure from the Locust wave that was gradually pressing out from Ephyra's overtaken borders. Some guards were even reporting indirect enemy contact while on their patrols; Anya had officiated one of the transmissions herself. No one wanted to admit it, but the fortress-like Slab was on the verge of falling prey to the invasion that had already claimed much of Ephyra. The prison faculty's urgency in getting the inmates out and pardoned as soon as possible did little to allay Dom and Anya's fears.

"Don't worry, Anya; they'll get here. We're talking about moving a friggin' brigade of hard ass criminals here. Shit's probably going to take a while."

He was right, though the way he was mercilessly wringing his hands suggested he needed to take his own advice. Forcing herself to take a deep breath and focus on something other than her thrumming pulse and the emptiness of the street, Anya glanced around her cold surroundings.

The broken, debris-strewn street was dominated by the building behind them; in spite of the fact that its entire northern wall was little more than a mountain of mortar chunks and red brick dust, it was still the most intact structure on the block. All around them, the wind blew thinly through the corpses of buildings that lined the streets, their foundations collapsed by emergence holes and their walls pockmarked by bullets. It seemed like few parts of the city didn't look like this anymore; nearly every street had at least a few houses or stores that had been laid low in battle.

Arms wrapped around herself in a vain attempt to ward off the remnants of the night's chill, Anya looked towards the east. The sun was rising, and the bleary, colourless rays illuminated an entire city full of ruined buildings; the horizon was jagged with them.

This forlorn street had been designated as the rendezvous point for the inmates and prison faculty. Once the trucks full of pardoned prisoners arrived, as per Colonel Hoffman's explicit orders, they would be escorted straight to the COG headquarters and enlisted as Gears.

Or _re_-enlisted, Anya thought wistfully.

"Shit."

Dom's entire body tensed; his eyes were unfocused, but it was clear he was listening for something. Anya strained her ears as well, then had to swallow her heart back down as the roar of multiple engines suddenly echoed through the street.

Amidst the emotional onslaught that washed over Anya—somewhere between the instantly crashing heartbeats and the nausea churning in her stomach—she was suddenly overcome by the urge to find a mirror and check her appearance. She reached up and tried to smooth her hair back as best she could. The long night hours they'd spent waiting on this street probably hadn't been kind to her make-up job either...

"Dom...do I look okay?"

She caught the man's eye, and the dull look on his face stopped her primping cold.

"You look _fine_, Anya," Dom reiterated outloud, his tone slow and deliberate. "I mean, none of that matters...Not to him, anyways."

Anya blinked several times, then shook her head in embarrassment. "You're right. I'm...being stupid."

Dom's vaguely exasperated expression held for a scant second before melting into a sad smile. "Hey," he said, reaching out to give Anya's arm an apologetic rub. "I'm sorry. I know how much this means to you. I get it."

The corporal's last words were drowned out by the clamour of the approaching vehicles as they bombed through the city; the friends exchanged a final glance, then turned to stare down the street together.

No sooner had they looked, the first of a long convoy of beat-up civvie transport trucks turned at the dusty intersection and rolled up the uneven asphalt. One by one, they came to a shuddering halt before the building, the rhythmic cough of the idling engines still booming through the streets. The doors to the head vehicle swung open, and several haggard men in dark uniforms emerged. As they hauled themselves up the stairs, they were met by the group behind Dom and Anya, and the two sides began the barely-nessecary legal procedures.

The drivers—heavily armed, Anya could see—also stepped of the trucks, each one going to the rear doors and unlocking them. There was the sound of a hundred truck doors winching up, and then the hordes of prisoners began to pour out into the street.

"Oh God, Dom..." Anya breathed, her throat instantly tight. Her eyes darted through the throngs of dirty, jumpsuit-clad inmates as they clogged up the street and spilled up onto the stairs where Anya and Dom stood. Driven by cold protocol, the COG escorts were attempting to assert full control over the prisoners, but revolt seemed far from their minds. Through the grime and blood on their pale, worn faces, Anya saw nothing but relief; it was obvious they were too happy about being released back into the world alive to even think about making trouble.

But that didn't mean they looked alive.

Anya thought she'd seen the worse in the civilians these days, their bones becoming more and more apparent as the food rations became more severe by the week, but these men were _emaciated_. The standard issue orange uniforms hung on the skeletal bodies of many of the men, the skin of their hands and faces drawn taught over the jutting bones. Even the prisoners who had managed to retain their physique seemed about to keel over at any moment, their ropey, malnourished muscles sagging pitifully beneath tired flesh.

And the _scars_, they all had so many scars; jagged lines of twisted white flesh that marred every inch of some men. Horrible and breathless, the minutes ticked by; Anya watched the exodus of inmates with steadily blurring eyes.

"This is what he lived through?" she whispered as she and Dom frantically raked the crowd for a single face. "Look at them...is he...is he like _this_?"

The image of a certain weakened, unshaven Gear loomed at the corners of Anya's mind, his once-powerful form hollowed by starvation and disease, but she bluntly refused it. The last time she'd seen him, he was standing healthy and strong, his muscled body held with stalwart pride in spite of the handcuffs and the guards at his sides. It had become the mental snapshot she'd held in heart and mind for the past four years.

He had looked to her that morning, in the wordless moments before they dragged him away: his startlingly blue eyes had never left her heart feeling so full, and yet so horribly empty.

And so she remembered that face: the eyes, the jawline, _everything_. It was the visage that kept her awake at night, and haunted her during the day. That was how she'd kept him in her memory, safe and familiar. Anything else just wouldn't be him.

_Would it?_

"...Where the hell is he?"

The sun had finally crested the destroyed Ephyran skyline, setting lifeless fire to the city of stone. The orange horde of prisoners was thinning somewhat as the armed guards ushered them towards the train that would whisk them off to the front lines. And still they hadn't found the man they searched for. The twinge in Dom's voice told Anya he was getting as desperate as she was.

"I mean, I've scanned the face of every asshole here twice..."

Another painful minute rolled away. Anya's gaze raced over the shuffling criminals, but she could feel her heart sinking, getting bogged down in a single, quicksand-like notion.

"He's still..._alive_...right?"

The lieutenant wasn't sure if it was the nerves or the extreme lack of sleep, but the words sounded so goddamn ludicrous, she wanted to laugh at them, even if just to make their bitter edge go away.

_This isn't happening_. _It's insane, and it's damn well not happening_. She hadn't waited almost half a decade to have her heart shattered at the last possible moment. No frigging way.

But for one, dreadful moment, the colour drained from Dom's suddenly stony face, and Anya wanted to throw up.

"I..." He stopped, head bowing slightly. "No...no. That's not possible. Hoffman...he'd know. He'd tell us."

The colonel's face flashed across Anya's brain—her commanding officer, and the man who'd sentenced their most beloved friend to forty years in the worst prison imaginable—and she felt a pained grimace creep over her features. She didn't want to admit it to Dom, but she had little faith in Hoffman's graciousness in this situation.

And still, doubt gnawed at her like a bonesaw; when she drew breath now, it came in hitched stutters, her throat tightening with sudden terror and grief. In spite of all the long years of tears, of praying for him and begging her heart for bravery, in this exact moment, Anya could feel her chest caving in on itself, and her world going right with it.

_God, you're so stupid._ Anya screamed miserably inside her head, eyes screwed shut. _They _told_ you. You read the stats. Life expectancy is less than a year for Slab inmates. You knew it was as good as a death sentence, you knew you'd lost him. You _knew_..._

_Anya..._

She stopped, breath frozen in her aching throat, as a second voice flashed through her mind. It was not her own, but a man's, from a distant memory. Its deep tones were painfully familiar, and as hard as she tried to wince it away, she found her mind rushing backwards into the vision of that day four years ago...

_"Anya...damn it, look at me."_

His voice had been uncharacteristically soft; that frightened her more than anything else.

_ "N-no. This is bullshit, Marcus. That can't be their decision. It can't, it—"_

_ "It is. Everyone saw this coming. It's over. You and Dom...you have to let this go."_

_ "I...What? What the hell are you talking about? "_

_ "I'm sorry; God, you _know_ I am. But, I...shit, I won't let you waste your life on me."_

_ "No...no. Screw that."_

_ "Anya, please—"_

_ "_No_. I don't care what you say; you can't ask us to just forget you ever existed. That's not how it works. I don't give up that easily."_

The memory cut out like an old film, her final words echoing through her mind. The lieutenant opened her eyes.

"It doesn't matter if he would, Dom..." Anya said suddenly, her voice low and quiet with conviction. Throwing emotional caution and restraint to the wind, she grabbed her fellow Gear's hand and gave him the best teary-eyed smile she had in her.

"It doesn't matter, because Marcus is here. We just have to keep looking. _He's_ _here_; I know it."


	2. I: Non Populus, Part Two

**I.  
>Non Populus<br>**(Part Two)

_oh, tell me, will I love?  
>and tell me, will it be enough?<em>

Staring blindly past the grimy, cracked window frame, Victor Hoffman heaved a sigh and took another gulp of his cold, gritty coffee. It was a strangely calm day in Ephyra: all morning, the veteran had been holed up in his cramped, under-furnished office without a single notable incident. Not once had he been called upon to whip up a miracle fix for some new calamity that had cropped up somewhere in the city. Even the chairman had left him alone today; he couldn't remember the last time that had happened.

The colonel turned from the window to face the rickety hunk of kindling that passed for a commanding officer's desk these days. These rare hours of relative peace had a trade-off: no panic-inducing emergencies in the city meant he was clean out of excuses to avoid the mass amount of paperwork that needed doing. Hoffman grunted; he'd let himself get lazy, and what had been just a few trays of dossiers had become a literal mountain range of paper that claimed the better part of his desk space.

And, of course, his decision to release the entirety of the Slab's prisoners hadn't lightened the load. According to his secretary, they'd had the whole lot of the sorry bastards moved and initiated in the enlisting process before noon. Hoffman had been more than a little surprised; the men in charge at the Jacinto Maximum Security Penitentiary had more than a reputation for being _difficult_, so their sudden punctuality and organization was more than a bit disconcerting.

_Things must have been going to shit faster than we guessed out there_, Hoffman thought grimly.

The colonel pushed the notion away, turning his mind instead toward the monumental task of getting through that paperwork. He had one hand on the splintered back of his office chair, mentally fortifying himself for a full day of cataloguing and permission slips and signatures, when he heard the door to his secretary's office outside slam open. Hoffman raised a heavy brow at his own as-of-yet unopened doors.

_ Good. Give me a disaster to deal with so I can get the hell out of this paperwork horseshit._ Outside, his secretary's muffled voice floated out to greet the visitor.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but if you could just sit down, I'll let the colonel know that you're...Ma'am? I'm sorry, but you can't go—Ma'am! _Ma'am!_"

The heavy thud of boots on wooden floor closed in rapidly on the entrance to Hoffman's office, then the ornate double doors burst open to reveal the very last thing Hoffman wanted to see today.

_Well. Here's your disaster. Now deal with it_.

"...Afternoon, Lieutenant."

His tone came out much cooler than he'd intended, and seeing the look on Anya Stroud's face, he immediately regretted it. She was in civilian plainclothes: the casual, almost helpless look they gave her caught the colonel off-guard. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy; her platinum hair, usually pulled into a mercilessly tight bun, hung in limp waves over her tops of her sagging shoulders. The woman's posture was passive, almost calm, but the way her hands were balled into fists at her sides betrayed her.

"I'm so sorry, Colonel!" The secretary clopped through the door behind Anya, her worn-out face painted crimson with sharp agitation. "I tried to tell her to wait for—"

Hoffman silenced the woman with a single raised hand, never taking his eyes off the lieutenant before him.

"Thank you, Clayre; I think I can spare a moment here."

The younger woman glanced from Anya to Hoffman, then nodded curtly and backed out as quietly as her black pumps would allow. The doors made a dull, echoing thud as they closed behind her. Anya hadn't moved a muscle.

"Is he dead?"

The blunt force of the question caught Hoffman full in the chest, pausing him for precious seconds. He blinked, then inhaled deeply. "Stroud, listen—"

"_Answer me, sir_." Her voice was deathly quiet, but grating and raw. "Is he...is he dead?"

He could see now that pain and grief had seeped into every line of the woman's face, draining her of her healthy feminine glow and aging her immensely. Again, Hoffman found himself hesitating. For years, Anya had been one of the most loyal Gears he'd ever had; didn't that mean she deserved some sort of compassion from him? Some sort of respect?

The truth, Hoffman knew. It meant she deserved the _truth_. When he signed those release papers for the Penitentiary, he had made a decision. He hadn't known if it was the right one—he still wasn't completely sure—but he had his reasons, and when he inked his signature on that all-important document, his hand had never been steadier. But now he had to face the consequences of that decision, and he would be damned if he glossed over it like some snakish politician.

_I'm not Prescott. I might not be a good man, but I'm not a liar, either._

"Far as I know, he's very much alive," Hoffman replied simply, edging out from behind his desk. The panic evaporated from Anya's face, leaving only confusion in its wake. Her head moved side to side, slowly, brow furrowing as she digested the information.

"I _waited_, sir. For six hours, we waited at the rendezvous point, Dom and I. We looked for him, and he wasn't there. If...if he's still alive, then where..."

She trailed off. Slowly, her jaw slackened, and she stared at him with huge, dumbfounded eyes.

_Yeah, here it comes, Vic._

"You didn't pardon him," Anya stated plainly. The look on her face said she knew she was right, but still she waited for Hoffman to confirm or deny. It was painfully clear that she wanted, more than anything, to hear him say she was wrong.

_ Shit, Anya, I'm sorry. I really am._

"No," he said, forbidding himself from hesitating this time. "I did not."

It took several long seconds for his words to fully compute in his lieutenant's brain; when they finally did, a change came over her. Teeth were gritted, shoulders squared back, and those beautiful green eyes blazed. The woman before him was suddenly the spitting image of the late Major Helena Stroud, and it almost scared him.

But when she spoke, it was Anya's voice, not her mother's, though it carried the same fierce, unyielding edge.

"How many prisoners did you release today, sir? Hundreds? Thousands? And somehow, only Marcus was left behind?"

"You know my reasons. Fenix was charged with—"

"Of all those monsters..." the lieutenant continued, throwing proper address etiquette out the window. "Murderers and rapists and child molesters..."

"What the other sorry bastards did is not of my con—"

"You'll forgive them, sir, but you won't forgive _him?_"

"Damn it, Anya, you're acting like the man is innocent!" Hoffman brought his fist down hard on the corner of his desk, nearly collapsing the damn thing. "When Fenix abandoned his post, he abandoned his men, and the civilians who were counting on _us_ to defend them. Because he deserted, we lost that battle, and because we lost that battle, we lost the _whole damned city_. Every Gear on that front died, Anya. _Every one_. At the end of the day, I was lookin' at eighty-three dead soldiers, over three-hundred slaughtered civilians, and a city that was steadily filling up with corpses as the Locust took over. So by _my_ count, Lieutenant, those numbers make Fenix the single most prolific murderer on the planet."

"That's...that's just_ illogical_." Anya was somehow managing to keep some semblance of calm, but her tone was sharp and breathless. "You can't just blame one man for the loss of an entire battle."

"You're right; usually, you can't. But this time, _I absolutely can_. Fenix had some of the steadiest hands with a Hammer of Dawn target; when it came to entrusting a soldier with the responsibility of wielding it, he was the natural choice. So when he screwed off with the targeting laser, he left a whole platoon completely defenseless and, worse than that, unable to protect the city at their backs."

Shit, he'd wanted to keep this civil, but his blood was really up now. He hadn't realized how raw he still felt about that day; now that it was all bubbling up to the surface, he understood that there was no polite way to get through this.

"No..." Hoffman growled finally. "Fenix screwed us all over, and for _nothing_."

"For his_ father!_" Anya hissed incredulously, slicing the tense air as she threw her hands out wide. "Marcus heard Professor Fenix's SOS, and he reacted in the only way a son could be expected to. How can you condemn him for that? You would have done the same. _I_ would have done the same."

Hoffman had to fight off a grimace; Anya couldn't have known how much those last words stung. She had been working the comm links when her mother had been killed during the bloody Operation Leveler—shit, she'd had to report the T-4 triage code herself—and would have probably given anything to have a chance to run out and try to save her that night.

"Maybe I would have, Stroud," Hoffman replied at length, though he was suddenly too tired to spit any more venom. "But then I would have faced the consequences of my actions, just like Fenix did, and continues to do so."

"Of course, when all the other hardened criminals get a free ri—"

"_Consqeuences that_," the colonel steamrolled ahead. "In Fenix's case, were far less severe than they could have been."

He narrowed his eyes, jaw working back and forth. The truth stuck like a cold, unfeeling lump in his craw, and he wanted it out.

"He could have been executed, Anya. Easy. One word from me, and they would have strapped him down in front of a firing squad so damn fast, it'd make your head spin."

No sooner had he bit off the words, he knew he'd probably been wrong to even think them, let alone hurl them out into the open like that. Anya just stared at him; her expression couldn't have been more shocked, horrified, or wounded if he'd pulled out his sidearm and shot her right there and then.

She bowed her head then, her hair hanging lank over closed eyes.

"He's a _good man_." The heaviness of her whisper caught Hoffman by surprise; he could hear the strain of unshed tears. "A man who doesn't deserve to live like a caged animal, let alone die like one. Why can't you see that?"

The quietness that followed seemed to swallow the office whole. Sighing, more to break the excruciating silence than anything, he rubbed the back of his neck and forced himself to meet his lieutenant's eyes. The woman didn't deserve an ounce of the pain he seemed so keen on ladling out today. Hoffman found himself wishing she could have just sucked it up and settled for a nice civvie boy instead—not for the first time, either—but he couldn't ignore the truth: he didn't want to hurt Anya any more than he had to here.

As far as he saw things, he'd been kicking her in the teeth for quite long enough.

"Anya...listen to me," Hoffman began slowly. "I know it seems like I'm the heartless asshole here—and don't get me wrong, that's exactly what I am—but I get why you're so cut up over this. Really, I _get_ it. But there are hundreds of families out there who, due to Fenix's blatant disobedience, are still mourning the loss of loved ones who died that day. Gears, civilians, doesn't matter. I owe them _everything_, and if I just let Fenix off scott-free, I would be shitting on the life of every man, woman, and child who sacrificed themselves on that day. Do you understand that?"

Anya's lips were pressed tight; silence seemed to emanate from her and coat the whole room with its discomfiting stickiness. The colonel tried to catch her gaze, but her eyes were cast down to the expanse of scuffed wood floor before her. Slowly, her wild, borderline-hostile stance melted back into something straight-backed and rigid. Her face was suddenly utterly devoid of emotion, though she still refused to give Hoffman her eyes.

"Yes, sir," she threw down coolly in her CIC officer's voice. "I understand perfectly."

The words were bitter and cold despite their monotone delivery. Hoffman hated hearing them, but he knew there could be no other resolution to this ugly conflict. If Anya never forgave him, if she spent the rest of her life hating him, and cursed his name for every night she'd be forced to spend alone...then he'd just have to learn to deal with it. Fenix wasn't the only one with consequences to face.

The colonel cleared his throat, the commonplace sound of it suddenly dragging the atmosphere of the office back down to something more livable. For several uneasy seconds, he wondered if he should say something, give the poor girl a pat on the back. _Something_. But when he looked at the lieutenant, her posture gave no quarter whatsoever, the aura of anger and pain that radiated outward from her stiff body seeming to crackle in the air. It was clear as day that, right now, she just wanted to get the hell away from him; Hoffman couldn't find it within himself to blame her.

"Take a couple days off, Lieutenant," the colonel sighed gruffly. The picture of another specific Gear flashed briefly through his mind. "...Corporal Santiago, too. Do what you gotta do, but for now, you're dismissed."

Anya stood, motionless, eyes locked forward and fists trembling gently. Hoffman watched the way her brow furrowed, half-expecting another outburst, but she merely gave a tiny nod and turned on her heel.

"Thank you for your time, Colonel."

* * *

><p>Dom never paced, but now, his immense boots were practically wearing a track into the dull mahogany floorboards outside the doors to the COG Command offices. The thick stone walls of the building, so typical of grand Ephyran architecture, sucked away noise as efficiently as a pre-E-day recording studio; Dom hadn't heard a thing since Anya had blazed through those heavy doors, but it seemed like hours ago.<p>

When the dual slabs of solid wood finally did burst open, the corporal almost jumped. He turned just in time to watch Anya stride stiffly over the threshold, allowing the doors to slam heavily behind her. Frantically, Dom scanned her face for any clue as to their friend's fate, but her expression was unnaturally stony, her posture robotic.

It took ever ounce of willpower not to allow his hope to come crashing down right then and there.

"Anya? Did you find Hoffman? Does...does he know?"

But the lieutenant wasn't even looking at him. She stared straight ahead, shoulders hunched slightly as her hands curled and uncurled; Dom could hear her laboured breathing all the way from where he stood.

"Shit, Anya, _talk to me_." The man stepped forward, his brow creasing. He no longer cared about keeping the pang of panic from his voice. "What did the colonel say?"

Still, she was silent. Dom's heart dropped like an anchor, dragging all his innards down into his feet. "Anya...I..." He was instantly numb; he reached out, barely feeling the soft cotton of the woman's shirt as his hand alighted on her shoulder.

It was as though his touch shattered the glass casing that held Anya's emotions under icy control. In an instant, she whipped around, her pretty face suddenly a mask of vicious determination; Dom didn't think he'd seen anything like it.

"If I can get you into the Slab," she said, her lips moving slowly and deliberately. "Can you break Marcus out?"

"I...what are you..."

"Because thanks to Command, you and I have a few days to kill now."

The corporal's mind was cloudy, his thoughts frayed to almost nothing by hours-no, _years_-of agonizing uncertainty and dread, but understanding managed to seep its way through the layers of sleepless grief. He crinkled his brow helplessly at the possibility Anya laid before him.

"You mean he's...?"

"Alive." Anya had her lieutenant voice on in full; Dom could barely recognize the vision of brash conviction standing firm before him. "But not for long, Dominic."

The initial shock of the revelation of his friend's fate was blown away by the weight of the woman's lingering statement. _Of course_; she knew as well as he did that the horde was pressing in on the Slab even as they spoke. Marcus was running out of time.

They had to move.

Fast.

Dom exhaled slowly, then met Anya's eyes. He watched the fires that blazed within them, and it wasn't long before he felt them ignite similar sparks deep in his chest. He clapped a firm hand on his friend's shoulder, his face twisting into a grim smile.

"Let's bring 'em home."

* * *

><p><strong><em>end.<em>**


	3. II: Bruise, Part One

**II.  
>Bruise<br>**(Part One)

_pretty eyes, don't tell me lies,  
>got a legend in the night.<em>

The close walls and low cement ceiling of the Combat Intelligence Centre were not only claustrophobic, but they served to effectively amplify the vocal chaos that always erupted during peak battle hours.

The hot, stagnant air was thick with the frantic voices of the CIC officers as they doled out orders, repeated complicated strings of coordinates, and offered words of general encouragement to the Gears on the other end of their comm links. The high-ranking Command personnel weren't helping things either, their loud, gruff voices ricocheting around the room as they waded through the cramped maze of desks, computers, and haphazard paper stacks. For Anya, the endless stream of words and numbers clashing around her was beginning to grate on her sleep-deprived nerves.

And her squad was still out of frigging communication.

_ Goddamn it._

"Control to Delta," she tried again faithlessly, but she knew it wouldn't get through. "What's your status? Has communication been re-established? Repeat, have you managed to re-establish comms?"

She was greeted by the mocking crackle of static, a sound that had become far too familiar in the past hour. She took a moment to put down her nub of a pencil and rub her aching temples. Splayed out on the desk before her was a mess of papers—dossiers, maps, napkins with coordinates scrawled hastily in their corners—illuminated only by the dim blue glow cast by her computer's face. Her eyes rose to the flickering screen and, for perhaps the hundredth time that day, scanned the image projected there.

It was a map of the Jilane Birthing Creche facilities, the location that Delta had been deployed to the night before. It was strictly a search-and-rescue mission; the Gears were to seek out a signal in the breeding farms and evacuate any and all survivors. Due to the nature of the location, the civilians would likely be mostly women and children; a high-stakes rescue in any situation, but humanity's steadily dwindling population only heightened the risks. If there was any extra pain to increase Delta's chance for success, Anya had made sure to take it.

Having taken a moment to refortify herself—_God, how long had it been since she last slept? Eaten?_—the lieutenant breathed deeply, then pressed a delicate gloved hand to the tac-com in her ear.

"Again, this is Control to Delta, do you read me?"

The link just buzzed back at her; she swore silently and resisted the urge to whip her pencil across the crowded room.

She jumped as she felt something touch her shoulder. Turning, she was greeted by Hoffman's face, his brow wrinkled slightly more than usual as he gazed down at her. He had one finger in his ear, speaking distantly to some unknown person about one of the other deployed squads, but his gaze was focused on her. Without breaking his monotone conversation, the colonel lowered his chin in a slight nod, his hand gripping her shoulder gently, then continued on his way. It was a big gesture for the generally stoic hard-ass. He must have caught word of the latest disaster to befall the Gears in Jilane: almost two hours ago, Baird had reported that he'd been forced to take full command of Delta.

It could mean only one thing: Marcus Fenix—the unflinching spearhead of the force of nature known as Delta squad—was, for whatever reason, no longer able to lead his men, so the responsibility had fallen to Baird.

When Anya had first heard the corporal's sneering voice over the comm link, she'd almost been indignant—what the hell was he doing overriding Marcus like that? But then the reality of the situation had dawned on her...

—

_"Control, this is Delta."_ Just hearing those words from Baird had been disconcerting—for Anya, "Delta" was practically synonymous with Marcus' name.

_ "Success, repeat: mission success. We need heavy evac. Make that three Ravens, very hot LZ."_

Hearing the good news did little to tamp down Anya's rising fears, but her officer's instinct overrode them; her fingers danced across her keyboard, causing a storm of numbers and callsigns to cascade over her computer screen.

"Wilco, ETA three-five minutes..." She swallowed; her mind tried to figure out how to ask about Marcus without breaking all-important CIC protocol.

"Baird...do you..." She fought hard to keep her voice even. "Do you need casevac?"

Casevac: casualty evacuation. Just saying the word made her stomach flip.

But Baird had let a sliver of gruff compassion escape his scowling, tough-as-nails exterior.

_"He's gonna be okay, Anya."_ Damn, had her tone really given her away so easily?

_"Just get us out of here."_

—

It had been so hard not to press, not to claw Baird over for more information. For soldiers, the working definition of "okay" had become unfortunately broad in recent years; in the space of a few scant seconds, a thousand possible scenarios flashed through Anya's mind, each one more horrific than the last. But in that moment, Delta was up to their neck in trouble, and there was no place for her personal fears.

Those fears had hardly eroded in the hour or so that had ticked by since that last transmission. Of course, her heart was never truly at rest unless she knew that Delta—and Delta's sergeant—were back sound asleep in their barracks, but things were different now. There was so much at stake.

She sighed, her eyes focusing on the blinking screen before her. They had to be back in range now, or at least on their way home. Hell, she'd had three Ravens en-route for their high priority evac; if they'd encountered any sort of trouble, _someone_ in this mess of a CIC headquarters would have heard about it. For the last time, she raised her hand and hit her tac-com button.

"Control to Delta, repeat: Control to Delta. How copy?" She furrowed her brow. "...Baird? Baird, are you there?"

More predictable static. _Son of a bi_—

"Yeah, yeah, Control, we're back in range. Baird here: how may I serve you?"

Anya sat bolt upright in her chair, her relief at finally contacting Delta making her impervious to Baird's snide remarks.

"Delta! I read you. Have the survivors been evac'd? What's your status?"

"Our status is just peachy, Control." The fuzzy comms link did little to mask Baird's sarcasm. "We're en-route to Jacinto, and bringin' back a horde of nutbar dames and their brats for you, too."

Anya felt a sliver of weight slide from her shoulders. So they'd done it; they'd tracked down the signal, and they'd found survivors. Important ones, too: women and children. Whether they liked it or not, they'd all be heroes for this, she knew.

"Understood, Delta. Is...is everyone okay?"

"Uh, sure," Baird replied wearily. "But I'm not really the guy to talk to. Why don't you ask—oh, I don't know—my _squad leader?_"

For a bare second, Anya's breath caught in her throat, but the tightness in her chest disappeared instantly when the crackling of a second tac-com entering the link filled her ear.

"Control...Fenix here. Reporting four civilian casualties on the night, but everyone's out."

"Copy that, Sergeant...Glad to hear the good news."

The familiarity of the man's deep voice brought her heart rate back down to normal levels, but as her head finally cleared, a shadow of mild anger streaked through it.

"Marcus, what the hell happened? Are you okay?"

There was an ambiguous grunt on the other end of the line. "I got myself into some bad shit. That's all."

"Mhm, great, Sergeant. Just let me file the incident under the _Bad Shit_ records. They're really filling up these days, you know... "

"Okay, fine." Marcus conceded gruffly. "I was forced into close quarters combat with a _large scale aggressor_."

Dom's voice suddenly clipped in. "Marcus got punched in the face by a Mauler."

In spite of the man's care-free humour, Anya's stomach somersaulted. She remembered the few times she'd been unfortunate enough to see a Mauler in action—the impenetrable armour, the explosive flail, the horrible, earth-shaking footsteps—and her mind reeled to think of Marcus being within striking distance of one of the towering monsters.

"God_damn_, Marcus. Are...are you hurt?"

Silence momentarily claimed the line.

"I'll survive..."

His transmission was cut short by a series of hacking coughs. Anya winced.

"Marcus?"

"I'm _fine_." The sergeant insisted gruffly, but his voice was strained, like he was holding his breath. However, he bulldozed past any protest Anya could have made before she could even begin.

"We're getting close to Jacinto now; Sorotki puts our ETA around ten-five minutes. Tell Hoffman to get his ass out here to deal with the survivors." Marcus paused. "Just don't expect them to be throwing themselves down in gratitude."

"Understood, Delta. I'll be sure to bring him down myself."

"Thanks, Control. Delta out."

Anya had hardly laid back in her chair to let out a massive breath of relief when she felt another hand on her shoulder. Just like before, she found herself face to face with Hoffman, but this time, his mask of concern was replaced by his usual all-purpose scowl. Somehow, that was easier to deal with than his genuinely worried face.

"I heard Delta's on their way back, and with a couple Raven-fulls of survivors to boot. Job well done, Stroud," he growled.

"Thank you, sir, but Delta's been roughed up pretty badly. I'm fairly sure Sergeant Fenix has sustained potentially serious injuries out on the field; when they touch down, I'm escorting him to Jacinto Med."

Hoffman cut her off with a curt wave of his hand. "Negative, Lieutenant: I'm putting you in charge of overseeing the Jilane survivors."

"But, sir." Anya lowered her chin slightly. "Fenix is a walking wounded."

"Then he can walk his wounded ass to Jacinto Med himself." Hoffman's heavy brow knit down at her. "Right now, I need you to help those women and children get their feet. Talk to 'em, get 'em fed. The farms were a shit time, and according to Sorotki and the other pilots, it sounds like they're less than overjoyed about all this. I expect you to show them we're not the bad guys here."

He hesitated for a moment, as if wondering if he should give the situation due recognition or just move on. Finally, he just shook his head.

"Well...not anymore."

Anya watched him for a few more careful seconds, but it was clear he wasn't going to budge. Deep down, she knew his words made sense; she was a female, and as charming as she was sure some Gears could be, there was no substitute for the innate trust between fellow women. If anyone was going to convince the survivors of the creche that the COG was on their side again, it would be her.

Suddenly tired, she merely nodded slowly; all the long hours awake were beginning to catch up with her.

"Yes, sir, I'll see to it."


	4. II: Bruise, Part Two

**II.  
>Bruise<br>**(Part Two)

_oh, history, please let me go,  
>let me be, leave me alone.<em>

On any given day, one could usually hear the din from the COG mess hall from a mile away. Now, the old familiar hooting and raucous conversation was gone completely, and the corridors leading to the hall were uncharacteristically quiet. As she made her way to the mess, Anya wondered if they'd accidentally sent the pack of Jilane survivors to the wrong building, but there were few other places big enough to house that many people. However, she was grateful for the rare silence: it gave her a chance to snatch down the countless thoughts that were racing around her head and iron them out.

_This shouldn't be difficult. Just find out where they're coming from, then show them where they're going. That's all they really want. That's the key._

_ So where _are_ they coming from?_

A birthing crèche, one of the farms, that's where. It was easy enough to give a name to—impersonal, almost cold—but actually understanding the whirlpool of emotions and suffering that lay beneath that name seemed almost impossible. Anya had heard the stories, and she knew of a few female Gears who'd escaped the farms by thrusting themselves into war work, but almost all information about the crèches was highly classified by COG High Command.

However, when the rumours hefted such incendiary terms as _serial_ _rape_, they likely painted a more accurate picture than any government-issued dossier could hope to.

Anya cringed in spite of herself; while it was true that Gears had risked their lives to complete the rescue, it was still hard to blame the survivors of Jilane for harbouring some hard feelings.

_That doesn't change anything, though._ _I've dealt with grouchy civvies before. These ones just have a bit more reason to gripe. And their problem solving methods are notably more militant._

The woman felt herself subconsciously checking the pistol on her hip, but instantly scolded herself. She'd heard the post-mission reports, and while they were less than encouraging—one woman had supposedly held Baird at gunpoint; Sergeant Brand had been forced to shoot the woman to save her surly squad member—Anya knew too much about the human psyche to really condemn them. They were just scared out of their minds; if Anya had been in the same situation, the only barrier between her children and a world full of hungry nightmares, she knew she'd probably go amazon too.

_Ah, hell_.

The lack of rowdy noise pouring out from the mess was misleading; Anya had come to the wide doors before she'd even known it. She took a deep breath, but didn't allow herself to slow down. Momentum would be the key here. _Here we go_.

Despite her efforts, Anya stopped cold the moment she crossed the threshold into the huge hall. This was partly due to the fact that two small children had set down almost right in front of the hall's double doors, blocking it partially, but mostly because she hadn't prepared herself for the sheer number of scuffed up women and children that now dominated the mess. And they were all staring at her; the silence only thickened.

Anya had shaken her head when Baird referred to the surviving women of the Jilane birthing crèche as 'psycho amazon bitches,' but as she did a sweeping pass over the bedraggled assortment before her, those three words were really the only ones that came to mind. The children, ranging from young pre-teens to newborns, were wrapped in shreds of dark fabrics, as if their mothers had given them the warmest clothes to wear. The women themselves, however, were all scavenged guns and ragged armour and loveless expressions. Anya felt their frozen, predatory gazes sizing her up as she let the doors swing shut behind her.

It was clear that the pack of wild women had learned to hold their own, in more ways than one. While their cobbled-together bits of armour and plating covered their vitals, they still managed to come off as severely underdressed. The way they were standing and sitting around the mess, lithe bodies draped over the metal benches and tables with effortless sensuality, they looked like a high-budget ad for bullet-resistant lingerie.

Grievous Bodily Love: that's what they called themselves. They'd learned to weaponize their sexuality, and it certainly hadn't seemed to hinder their chances of survival. Maybe it was just their way of taking back power from the horrible men who'd wrenched it away from them all those years ago.

"Well well, what have we here? A high ranking woman in the mighty COG army? Fascinating."

A single woman emerged from the silent crowd and began to approach Anya; her hair had apparently been bleached to an irreverent bone-white, and her beautiful features were sharpened with mild wrath. She had one arm tied up in a makeshift sling, but it did little to impede her progress as she marched up between the tables; even the little kids sitting before Anya scampered to get the hell out of the silver-haired woman's way.

Anya put on her officer's face. "I'm Lieutenant Stroud. COG High Command sent me to ensure you and your fellow survivors are—"

"Oh, I understand; your big superior officers sent their useless woman to take care of the _other _useless women, right?" The woman sneered. "What, are your dumb slabs-of-muscle Gears already bored of tossing us around like a bunch of blow-up dolls?"

Anya blinked. "Excuse me?"

The woman planted her boots metres away from Anya, and the officer suddenly noticed the blood-encrusted bullet wound in her bare shoulder. _Damn. This is the one that almost capped Baird before Alex Brand shot her first_.

The woman opened her painted mouth to tear off another insult, but a second woman, just as beautiful and scantily clad, stepped behind her.

"Annalisa...please, let it go, okay?" The dusky-skinned woman breathed, looking tired and concerned. "She's just another woman doing her duty. We're all sick of fighting. Give her a break."

Annalisa made a face like she wanted to spit, but didn't think it was worth the effort. "Duty. Of course, pretty little things like her brainwash easily, don't they?"

"_Enough_," Anya said shortly, reminding herself firmly that she was the commanding officer here. "I'm here to help you. You can either swallow your pride and accept it, or hold a grudge for the rest of your lives. Either way, we're all going to have to get along, because the COG refuses to leave children defenseless."

Annalisa curled her lip in unadulterated disgust. "You're dumber than you look if you think our babies are defenseless," she hissed caustically, hefting her beat-up Hammerburst rifle. "Look around, blondie. How the hell do you think they've survived all these years? Just _guess_. Because I can guarantee it wasn't thanks to your beloved knights in shining armour."

There was little Anya could say in the face of the woman's words, acidic as they were. When Jilane was suddenly lost to the advancing Locust forces all those years ago, anyone who hadn't already been evacuated had been left to fend for themselves. The COG simply didn't have the manpower to go back on a dozen or more individual rescue missions, but that didn't take the edge off the truth: Anya's government had abandoned these women and children.

"I'm sorry," Anya said, her face stony. "_We're_ sorry. Our men just couldn't help you then. But they can now, and they_ did_. We need you to rejoin us. Surely, that can't be so inconceivably horrible."

It was always mindblowing how quickly a situation could spiral out of control.

There was a rush of movement, and then Annalisa had a fistful of Anya's collar, her pale, livid face pushed right up to Anya's.

"Your men? Help _us?_" The woman growled before Anya could even register a response. "Over half of the children you see here were unintentionally sired by _your _men. No...I think the monsters have done quite enough."

"Alright, Annalisa, I can't really allow you to lay hands on a ranking officer." A loud, clear voice cut easily through the sticky tension in the mess hall. "You've said what you wanted to say. Now let her go."

Anya and Annalisa snapped to look at the new speaker. A third woman, a blazingly unnatural redhead, was quickly closing the distance between them and herself in long, graceless strides. Anya recognized her with a start. _Sergeant Alex Brand_. Had she been just sitting in the back this whole time, watching as Anya presented herself as the convenient lamb to the slaughter?

_Yeah, thanks, Brand. Good of you to have my back like that.._.

"Annalisa!" Alex barked, reaching forward and jerking the woman's shoulder. "_Down, bitch_."

The amazonian leader reeled on Alex, teeth bared like she was going to go for the other woman's throat, but Alex didn't back down; slowly, Anya felt the grip on her collar ease off.

"You're a traitor, girl," Annalisa's venomous whisper was too low for anyone but the three of them to hear. "I won't forget what you did."

Alex flashed an icy smile. "Good. It'd be a pity to waste a second bullet on teaching you another lesson."

Anya snapped up from smoothing her recently attacked collar, fully expecting to watch Alex get smacked in the mouth. But shockingly, no retaliation from Annalisa came. The white-maned woman just glared utter daggers at the sergeant for a long moment, then stalked off into the ranks of her fellow survivors. Anya was distantly impressed: Sergeant Brand might have been a beligerent smart-ass who got away with far more than she should have, but damned if she wasn't an _effective_ smart-ass.

It was then, as the electricity drained from the hall's atmosphere, that Alex caught Anya's eye. She inhaled deeply—more for dramatic effect than to actually ready herself for addressing a superior officer, Anya was sure—then ambled over.

"Lieutenant Stroud, if I'm not mistaken?" she said, flicking her fingers over her forehead in a casual salute. "Sorry about that little altercation. The white-haired one doesn't play well with others."

"Clearly," Anya sighed. She glanced around the once again quiet hall. "What are you doing here, Sergeant?"

"Just following up on my mission, ma'am. Someone had to corral them all into one place, and it sure as shit wasn't going to be my hairy-assed comrades, was it?"

Anya tilted her head slightly. "Well, thank you for holding the fort, then. Consider yourself relieved."

There was the cool tone of a direct order in Anya's words, but Alex just matched her head tilt. Her face was a stony mask, as if she was doing her best to stave off a sly smirk.

"Ma'am, could I speak to you in private for a minute?"

"What of?"

"Just a minute, I promise."

Anya crossed her arms, suddenly aware that the entire mess hall was probably watching her again, and frowned at the sergeant.

_How in the hell did this woman and Marcus function in the same squad without taking each other's heads off?_

"If you insist, Brand. Out in the hall?"

The smug grin Alex had been keeping at bay seeped over her thick lips. "After you."

Eager to escape the sea of restless eyes, Anya accompanied Alex out of the mess and into the hall beyond. The doors swung shut behind them, and the lieutenant raised her chin expectantly at the other woman.

Alex coughed and rubbed her neck.

"Tough in there, eh?"

"You could say that," Anya said, not giving an inch. "My forte is combat coms, not public relations."

"I noticed."

If she hadn't been so tired, or hungry, or frayed out by hours in the CIC, Anya would have forced herself to react to such backtalk, but she just wasn't in the mood anymore. She massaged her temple and blew a slow breath through her nose.

"Is there something you actually wanted to discuss, Brand?"

"You bet I do." Alex replied cheerily. "How do I put this...You seem like you've got a handle on things thus far, ma'am. _Really_. But maybe you'd rather I take over for a while."

Anya stared, unfazed by Alex's poorly-disguised sarcasm. "I appreciate the sentiment, Brand, but the colonel has asked me to oversee everything from start to finish."

"With all due respect, Lieutenant, there's not much to oversee. I've already set them up for food and lodging for tonight, and I'll get the injured ones in to see Doc Hayman as soon as they've eaten something." The sergeant trained a bright gaze on Anya and leaned back on the wall. "Look. These girls...some were like family to me. I don't mean to rag on your abilities as the goodwill ambassador for the COG, but I understand them like no one else can. Maybe you can take a few hours to yourself, get some rest. It'll give me some time to level with them. You know?"

Anya hesitated, surprised at how tempted she was by her fellow Gear's offer. Alex tilted her head slightly then, a strange sort of sad, lopsided smile creeping onto her angled features.

"...I'd be grateful, ma'am."

Something in the younger woman's eyes triggered some sort of understanding in Anya. Of course, in spite of all her button-pushing bravado, Sergeant Brand had been one of these women, all those years ago. Sometimes, when you only knew someone as a soldier, it was hard to remember that they'd had actual lives before then. While Alex made it clear that she was a Gear now, and would never be anything but, it seemed only natural that she would still harbour those feelings of affinity with the others who'd suffered in Jilane.

Maybe leaving them under her care was for the best.

"A few hours, Sergeant," Anya replied at last, suddenly keenly aware of the fact that she hadn't eaten or slept in over twelve hours. "Nothing more. I'll grab a meal, see to some things, and be right back, okay?"

A flicker of what might have been actual happiness brightened up Alex's smile. Even then, it looked a whole lot like smug triumph.

"You're a saint, Lieutenant. Thank you."

"I'm pretty sure I should be the one thanking you, Brand." Anya turned down the hall, taking a moment to straighten her officer's jacket a final time.

"Oh, and speaking of _seeing to things_, ma'am..."

Anya glanced back over her shoulder; Alex stepped forward, biting her lip slightly.

"If you're going to see Sergeant Fenix sometime in the near future...could you give him an apology for me?"

"Apology," Anya repeated blankly. She wouldn't have been shocked to hear that things had gotten tense between two sergeants in one squad, but nothing that would necessitate verbal atonement. Barring that, just hearing the word apology from Alex was a bit mindblowing. "What for?"

Alex shifted her weight from foot to foot, blowing a contemplative breath through her nose. "Nothing big. I just...ran my mouth off. Like a total jackass, actually." Anya was really perplexed now, but there was no trace of mockery in Alex's low voice. She reached up to rake her slender fingers through her messy red hair. "I'd tell the man myself, but...I figured you'd might be able to get to him first. Just tell him I'm sorry; he'll know what I'm talking about."

The lieutenant was still shellshocked: Alex wasn't one to concede openly to a man about anything, let alone admit to being in the wrong. And everyone knew that Marcus was the last person to be fazed by backtalk from his Gears; Alex must have felt she really offended him. Anya was instantly curious, but she knew not to press it.

"I'll see what I can do, Sergeant. Expect me back in a couple hours."


	5. II: Bruise, Part Three

**II.  
>Bruise<br>**(Part Three)

_standing vision in the door;  
>pretty thing, save my soul.<em>

Whether it was the cloistered rooms of the CIC, the soundless mess hall, or the bustling corridors of Jacinto Med, Anya seemed to be doomed to poorly lit hallways today.

She was exhausted, and borderline starving, but such was the life of a CIC officer—especially when your squad was Delta. But as always, the lieutenant knew she could hold out for another few hours. While she had the loose directions from one of the orderlies to go by, it didn't take long for Anya to locate her sergeant in the frantic hospital: she needed only follow the echoes of Doc Hayman's wrathful browbeating from the other end of the hallway.

"You don't seem to be understanding me properly, Fenix, so allow me to reiterate: I don't give a rat's ass if you have to plan a _themed brunch for the chairman himself _today, you're not leaving this room until you've got this IV your goddamn bloodstream."

"This is bullshit. It's just antibodies; save it for someone who needs it."

"Your sense of self-sacrifice might be inspirational to the blockheads you usually deal with, but it just pisses me off. Now sit still and quit wasting my immeasurably valuable time."

"Perfect. Then why don't you let me go, and we can stop wasting _each other's_ time?"

Anya entered the private treatment room and found the doctor and sergeant locked in a fiery glare-off of biblical proportions. Marcus was half-perched on the bare hospital bed, one boot brushing the floor like he was waiting for the first chance to escape. Hayman was in her battle stance, looking like a psychopath butcher with her blood-stained labcoat and one bony claw wrapped around a lengthy syringe. The way she was brandishing it, Anya wondered if she was going to use it to help Marcus, or to murder him.

The two forces of nature noticed Anya's entrance simultaneously and broke their soul-crushing stare-down to look at her. The lieutenant's lips parted slightly as she got her first gander at Marcus since the mission. After the report of his run-in with a Mauler's fist, Anya had expected him to look a little worse for wear, but she was woefully unprepared for what she saw. The entire left side of his face was a purple and black mask of ruptured blood vessels, the worst of the bruising blossoming out from a cut above his swollen eye. The grimy white strip of canvas that cradled his similarly battered arm did little to help appearances.

"Ah, Stroud, wonderful," the ancient doctor said sourly. "Kindly order your sergeant to sit his ass down and shut up before I decide to skip the middle man and knock him out myself. Seems you're the only one who can bludgeon some sense into the bastard these days..."

"No can do, Doc, the man's off duty," Anya said, feigning disappointment to hide the hot flush that Hayman's words had brought to her cheeks. "I'm afraid you're on your own."

Hayman snorted dismissively. "Naturally, I'll do all the hard work." She brought the syringe to bear beneath the cold white light and gave it a damning flick. "God knows I'm the only one with balls enough anyways."

Anya cringed as Hayman literally stabbed the sensitive inner elbow of Marcus' injured arm with the needle. Utterly unsympathetic, the doctor wiggled the syringe into a vein, causing blood to pearl at the point of injection and trickle over the contours of the sergeant's sinewy muscles. He blinked his bruised eyes once, slowly, then trained a glare on the doctor that would liquify steel.

"Frigging _ow._ You want to take a goddamn run at it next time?"

"Oh, would I ever." Hayman's leathery perma-scowl didn't even flicker. "Nothing would brighten my miserable existence more than getting to cause you hairy bastards bodily harm." She taped the cruel needle to his skin and deftly checked the IV bag to ensure the flow of clear liquid antibiotic. "But you all seem to be maiming yourselves just fine on your own."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Marcus growled quietly, glaring down at the medicine-pumping intrusion to his arm like it was all the IV's fault. "Next time I'm out getting my ass kicked for the good of humanity, I'll try to remember how much it ruins your day."

Hayman just dusted her crinkly hands before snatching a clipboard from the end of the hospital bed. She strode briskly over to the door, then whirled about, peering at Marcus from behind her horn-rimmed spectacles.

"You'd better. The less I see of you in here, the happier I am. And _you_, miss Stroud." The old harpy then turned her caustic gaze on Anya; in spite of herself, the lieutenant felt herself squirm like a child being chided by a strict parent. "_You_ are going to keep his ugly ass here until that IV bag is damn well _dry_, understand?"

"Perfectly, ma'am."

"Good girl. Now excuse me, children, but I have actual patients who require my attention. You know, the _dying_ ones."

With a flourish of billowing red-splattered labcoat, Doctor Hayman was gone, and Anya and Marcus were left alone in the wake of the woman's undying vitriol. It was always easy to make humourous jabs at the utter bitch that was Hayman, but something about her parting words had been unpleasantly sobering; it was hard to take cheap shots at a woman who spent every waking hour up to her elbows in blood, guts, and an unavoidable parade of dying men.

Anya lingered at the threshold for several more seconds, watching Marcus warily from the corner of her eye, then sighed audibly and approached. She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, keenly aware of the invisible perimeter of the sergeant's personal space. He was silent and averting his gaze; Anya couldn't tell if he was embarrassed by his cornucopia of obvious injuries, or just allowing her a few moments to stare blatantly at them.

"...You look like hell, Marcus."

For a few moments, his eyes remained unfocused like he hadn't heard. But then he lifted his good hand to test the afflicted area of his face, wincing as his fingers brushed the edge of the purple flesh.

"Yeah. Just wait 'til it really starts to swell."

"Attractive. Think it'll turn green?"

"Oh, one can only hope."

Anya let a few breaths of half-hearted laughter spill over her lips. Most of the time, it felt better to bury the little pains in heaps of dry wit, but there was a point when aimless joking became a misdirection tactic, meant to disguise serious injuries from anyone who might care too much. When it came to that, Marcus was the undisputed master. Anya bit her lip.

"What's the official prognosis?" she prompted, gesturing to Marcus' slinged-up arm.

"According to the good doctor: four bruised ribs, one fully torn rotator cuff, and a nasty case of whiplash." The soldier mumbled through the injuries like he was reading back a grocery list. "Nothing too excruciating. This frigging _headache_, on the other hand..."

Anya's brows shot up. "All that...from one punch to the head? Sounds more like you got hit by a semi-truck."

"Might as well have," Marcus growled wearily. "At least the force would spread over a nice big area of impact."

The lieutenant shook her head knowingly. "Leave it to a Fenix to figure out the physics of a Mauler fist to the face."

A shadow fell over Marcus' bruise-stained face, but Anya blinked, and it was gone.

"Yeah," the sergeant's voice was suddenly husky. "It was all we were ever really good for."

Silence rushed in behind his vague, yet wierdly core-brushing introspection; Anya cursed herself inwardly.

"Hell, Marcus, I didn't mean it like that at all." Sixteen years, and she still had no idea what the right thing to say to him in any given situation was. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Marcus said simply, furrowing his brow as if he regretted even replying. She watched him for a moment longer, gaze sweeping over his bruised features, then sighed and rested her chin on the heel of her hand.

"I just _worry_ about you." The woman shrugged, her half-lidded eyes drifting around the bare, starkly lit hospital room. She no longer said it as if it would be a huge revelation to him, in spite of the fact that he seemed surprised every time. "You know that."

He drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I do."

The stiff air between them held the weight of his words for an instant, then gave way to the same overwhelmed sort of silence that always followed these brief, but rare conversations. With a distant sadness, Anya wondered why they couldn't just _deal_ with each other by now; after years of edging awkwardly around moments like these, they were still fumbling them like a pair of freaked-out teens.

Predictably, he was avoiding her eyes again; Anya groped for some new topic of conversation to throw out into the open.

"...I got to meet the lovely ladies of Grievous Bodily Love today."

Marcus snorted, evidently grateful for the segue. "So Hoffman slagged you with rolling out the welcome wagon, eh?" He shook his head. "I knew he would. Couldn't have been a good time."

"Oh, I don't know. Getting manhandled by an amazon in a metal bikini has its moments."

He gave her one of his subtle head turns then, and she was keenly aware of his wintery eyes on her. A muscle in his jaw twitched in a way that always meant danger. "One of them jumped you?"

"Crudely put, yes. She looked like their leader, though, so maybe I should take it as a compliment."

The sergeant opened his mouth, clearly on the edge of reprimanding her for putting herself in what he considered "harm's way," but his headache must have suddenly surged, because he winced and screwed his eyes shut before getting a word out. He pinched the bridge of his nose and gave a hitched sigh.

"So Hoffman let you off early, then."

"Uh, not exactly...Sergeant Brand suggested she take over for a bit." Anya knew it sounded like the weak excuse it was, and Marcus' raised brow only intensified the pang of guilt she felt.

"And you let her?"

_It was my decision; I had good reasons._ "Yes, I did. If anyone is going to win those cold, bitter hearts over, it's going to be someone who's been there personally. I see no reason why Alex can't try her hand at bridging the societal gap for them." Anya imbued her voice with her cool officer's tone. "Besides, it's clear I've pushed my luck quite far enough with the women."

He held her gaze for a moment longer, then just gave a non-commital shrug. "I guess. She seems competent enough, at least from what I've seen."

"Well, she made sergeant, didn't she? But Hoffman did mention she was...interesting."

"She's a solid fighter," Marcus conceded with some difficulty. No matter how good of friends they were, he always seemed uncomfortable with discussing the members of Delta with her, like he was breaking some sort of unwritten squad mate code. "Gutsy as hell. But she's got a mouth on her."

Anya tilted her head slightly, remembering her conversation with the abrasive redhead. "Well, it seems she feels occasional remorse for said mouth, if that makes you feel any better."

The sergeant paused a beat. "Remorse?"

"Apparently. Alex pulled me aside just before I left to come here. She wanted me to give you an apology on her behalf; said you'd know what she was talking about."

Marcus watched her for a few seconds, digesting the information, then snorted. "So she thinks she hurt my feelings, does she? Shit, she must've caught me crying in the corner on the way home."

"From what I heard, Alex doesn't do _emotionally considerate_," Anya prompted. "It must have been a real gutpunch if she feels bad enough to send me to beg forgiveness."

He sighed, intently studying the tube running from his wrapped-up arm to the hanging IV bag; it was clear this was not a conversation he wanted to have. It took a couple long moments for him to wrestle up the reluctant words.

"Brand accused me of going to the farms...to use the girls. Decided I had too many medals to resist the doctors' invitation."

"_What?_" Red sparks streaked hotly over Anya's vision. "In front of everyone? She might have a mouth on her, but that's absolutely inexcusable."

The sergeant raised his brow at her in a way that made her feel like an overprotective mother, but she barely cared. The notion of some cocksure broad gutting Marcus in front of his men like that infuriated her. And judging by the look on his scarred face, _gutting_ was all too accurate a description.

Anya bit her lip, suddenly feeling guilty for reacting at all. Instead, she found herself shaking her head at the lingering ramifications of the sergeant's words.

"So the rumours were true, then. They really did send Gears to the birthing crèches for...for..."

"For sex. Yeah." He didn't spit the stark words so much as let them fall lifelessly from his lips. His eyes had a hard, unfocused look, as if he was looking at something that he couldn't quite recognize. "I'm sure it's all still highly classified. Only a few people know the truth anyways."

Marcus was working his jaw back and forth, as if he was relying on the friction to create enough electricity to get the words out of his throat. Anya just watched, sensing his rising discomfort. His mouth cracked slightly, then he just shut his eyes and took a run at it.

"But they _asked_ me if I wanted to go."

Anya froze. For several seconds, she was just stunned by the apparent confession, but then the old familiar feeling began to creep up on her, the one she got whenever she achieved these rare and fragile glimpses into the enigma that was Marcus Fenix. It was as if someone had thrown a priceless crystal vase to her, and she had only moments to run and catch it, or watch it shatter on the ground at her feet. The sergeant just never spoke about himself like this.

"It was years ago." Marcus continued, eyes narrowed like he was determined to get it all out in the open now. "And it was all so frigging _casual_. The doctors pulled me aside after one of my annual fitness checks...asked me if I wanted to take a vacation to Jilane. A goddamn _vacation_, that's what those scumbags called it." His lip curled. "Told me no one would have to know. I wouldn't even have to pay board. Bastards."

The man's voice was pure acid, but Anya could hear the twinge of shame in it. No matter what horrible, screwed-up situation Marcus found himself in the thick of, he always insisted on shouldering some portion of the responsibility.

It was always what broke Anya's heart the most.

"Marcus, I...had no idea." She spoke as softly as she could without risking patronization. "But I don't understand. Why _you?_"

His broad shoulders hunched in a gesture of mild apathy. "They said I was at my peak physical condition that year—my _prime_, they kept telling me—so maybe good breeding stock was all they cared about." His eyes darkened, shadowed by memories gone by. "Or maybe they just decided I'd accumulated enough trophies to get my name on the _good boy_ list."

Anya heard the loathing in Marcus' voice, quiet but scathing, and felt similar feelings rise in her own chest. It felt like a bitter betrayal. The breeding farms were unsavoury enough; how could the COG, their trusted government, allow them to corrupt even further? Did Hoffman know about it? Swallowing, Anya found herself hoping that just a handful of perverse doctors were to blame, and that COG High Command was blissfully ignorant of it all.

But in her heart, she knew all too well that the COG made sure it had an eye locked on everything. Even the secrets that were too dark for societal conscience.

The air had been pulpy with the sick truth Marcus had revealed, and in spite of his confession, he still seemed wildly uncomfortable. He leveled a gaze on her; his blue eyes carried a cautious, almost hunted look.

"I refused, by the way."

Anya would have laughed if she hadn't thought it would crush him outright. "Oh, _Marcus_, of course you did. And with great vehemence, I'm sure." She gave him a bracing smile. "Come on, I know you better than that."

For once, it must have been the right thing to say: a few of the deeply-worn stress lines around Marcus' face seemed to fade. "Yeah. I suppose you probably do."

And with that, the sergeant hoisted himself off the bed with some measure of pained difficulty, and yanked the IV syringe unceremoniously out of his slinged arm. Anya began to protest, but she glanced at the IV bag and realized it was empty; he must have been keeping an eye on the falling level of liquid the entire time.

"Hayman owes you big," he threw dryly over his shoulder as he awkwardly gathered up his things from beside the bed one-handed and headed for the door. "She would have had to tie me down if you weren't such a dazzling conversationalist"

Anya snorted, rising from the bed and joining him at the threshold. "Dazzled, were you?"

"Oh, always."

He turned to face her then, brows slightly arched as if he was seeing her for the first time all day.

"...You look exhausted."

Sighing inwardly, Anya just pushed past the man and out into the white-tiled corridor beyond. "You never tell a woman she looks tired, Sergeant."

He fell into step beside her, ignoring her previous comment completely. "How long have you been up?"

"I don't know. Twenty-eight hours, maybe. You?"

"Twenty-nine. Ish."

"Ah. So you're one to talk, I see."

He shrugged. "At least the Mauler was considerate enough to allow me a few minutes of beauty rest after assaulting me."

"Yeah, somehow, I don't think being knocked out cold counts as _restful sleep_."

"Hey, I'll take what I can get."

Anya shook her head, a smile playing upon the corners of her lips as they continued their walk in easy silence. They'd attained their usual degree of levity, and thus, some semblance of normalcy. Marcus' expression bore no trace of the emotionally leaden burden he'd unloaded back in the room, but something in his eyes said he was relieved at being rid of it all. Anya wasn't sure she liked playing preist to his heavy conscience, but if that was what he needed her to be, she'd gladly act the part.

In the end, a Fenix's trust was a rare reward all unto itself.

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


	6. III: Nothing Fails, Part One

**III.  
>Nothing Fails<br>**(Part One)**  
><strong>

_my mamma said  
>that the best thing in life was getting me,<br>and love.  
>my mamma said she would give her life up for me.<em>

Green eyes. Twin points of the earthiest, most flawless emerald hue she'd ever seen. When she looked close enough, she could pick out flecks of gold. _Gold_.

_Crazy. Absolutely crazy_.

Lieutenant Helena Stroud took a deep, steadying breath. She was utterly unaccustomed to moving gently; her slender, yet calloused hands were far more used to slamming magazines into guns and hurling frags than to anything like this. Slowly, carefully, like she was diffusing a stack of C-4 explosives, she lifted the bundle of blankets from the crib and sat down on the hospital bed, cradling the precious package in her lap.

"So. It's official," Helena whispered to her newborn daughter, tucking a strand of steel-blonde hair behind her ear. "I'm naming you Anya. They sent the birth certificate off today."

Anya mewled plaintively and squirmed, grasping at the air with her tiny, unwrinkled hands.

"Hm. Don't like it, eh? Well, I've had my heart set on that name since I was twelve, so you're going to have to deal with it."

Once again, the infant wriggled against her mother's protective embrace. Helena raised a brow, but felt herself reaching down to stroke her child's face with a single finger. It was still so insane to think that less than fifty-two hours ago, this little human being had still been in her tummy. She could barely even remember the excruciating hours of labour, but the dull ache that dominated her lower half assured her that it had been all very real.

_And now I have a daughter. Holy shit_.

Anya was looking up at her now, her gorgeous eyes wide as she seemed to take in the whole world around her at all once. Helena was fairly certain that babies didn't have personalities until a few months, but something in her daughter's perfect, round, milk-skinned face felt reassuring.

_We're going to be okay, darling. I promise_.

The lieutenant was so infatuated by the miracle in her arms that she almost didn't hear the footsteps approaching her private room. She tensed just as the door creaked quietly open, but it was silent for several long moments before her visitor spoke.

"I can't believe you."

It was impossible to startle Helena Stroud, and this was a voice she recognized all too well. She didn't even turn around.

"Hello, Grayson."

There was another heavy pause before the man merely chuckled joylessly.

"Of course. Of _course_. I should have known the great Lieutenant Stroud would be so casual about this." Grayson's voice was strained, like he was trying to keep it down. "You just had a baby, and that's all you can say. _Of frigging course_."

At this, Helena turned to glance over her shoulder. The man was leaning against the door, his broad shoulders easily filling the frame. It had been months since she'd seen his rugged features, but there was no mistaking that stripping gaze he seemed to save just for her.

_With those damned_ _green eyes_.

"So you're finally back from Acastu, Major," Helena said easily at length, though she was careful not to turn around completely. "Heard you and your men had quite the time in the imulsion fields."

"Cut the bullshit, Helena. Did you seriously think I wouldn't find out?"

His stark words curdled the hospital room air; hyper-sensitive Anya stirred slightly at the change in atmosphere, and Helena subconsciously tightened her embrace around her.

_Don't worry, darling. Mamma's got this_.

"Of course not," she said as softly as she could. "But they sent you overseas. What was I supposed to do?"

Grayson hunched his shoulders in an overly-dramatic shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Write a quick little letter, maybe? Something like: _Dear Grayson Vanders, I'm having your baby, please come back from the war to see her_."

His words were becoming harsher, edged by his obvious distress. Helena knew she had to handle this very, very carefully. Slowly, she hugged Anya to her chest and rose from the bed to face her fellow Gear fully.

"I didn't think you'd want to see her, Gray."

It was the truth; their last words concerning her impending pregnancy had been exchanged just before his deployment to Acastu, and they had been less than loving.

His eyes were locked on the package of swaddled blankets in Helena's arms; they had a distant, sad sort of look to them. But then he must have suddenly remembered those final conversations as well, because he ran a hand through his short-cropped auburn hair and sighed.

"What am I supposed to do here, Hel?" he asked, stepping warily into the room proper. "Please, I'd love to know. Because when you tell a man you're pregnant, then refuse to talk to him for six bloody months, it can be difficult to know how to respond."

Anya was fussing again; she let out a tiny cry that made Grayson flinch; Helena ignored them both and merely raised her chin at the major. "I thought I made it clear, Gray: you don't have to do anything. I'm going to raise her just fine on my own, and you can go on your merry, unburdened way."

"How is _that_ a solution? She's my daughter as much as yours."

_My daughter_. The words flipped a simmering switch in Helena. Red flooded the lieutenant's vision for an instant, and she felt her wrath streak from her lips like a viper's strike.

"_Yours?_ You wanted me to get _rid_ of her, you son of a bitch."

His face flickered, but he didn't miss a beat. "I was thinking of us, Helena. _Us_. You know what would happen if someone found out two ranking officers had a goddamn kid together."

"No, not _us_," Helena replied sharply, her breaths coming hard and short. "_You_. You, and _your_ career. We both know that's all you were thinking about that day."

Grayson just shook his head, like he was explaining something complex to an impertinent child; Helena hated it.

"Like it or not, girl, we're Gears first and foremost. _I always knew that_. I have no right bringing a child into this world, and neither do you."

Helena watched him for a few breaths, then sighed wearily.

"I think you should leave."

The major returned the stare, then let out a harsh, staccato laugh. "So that's it then?" He threw his arms out in disbelieving exasperation. " You're just going to...to keep her away forever?"

For a moment, the angry, yet desperate and wounded look on Grey's face made Helena hesitate. After all, this was still Gray she was talking to. _Her_ Gray. After all the heart racing moments, the nights of thrilling closeness, didn't she still care for this man?

But then the lieutenant bitterly reminded herself that he'd made his opinion clear on the day she'd told him she was pregnant. Given the choice between her and the baby, and his career, he'd chosen the latter. _Emphatically_.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she'd never really loved him at all.

"Like I said, I'm going to raise her by myself. You did quite enough."

He gave another incredulous snort, like he was no longer surprised by her ability to cut to the core. Slowly, he shook his head.

"...Can I at least _see_ her?"

Again, the small part of her heart, the part that refused to forget the past, felt for him. She almost relented, but then her new and ferocious maternal instinct swallowed up her pity, and she could think only of her daughter.

_ No, either he's her full-time father, or he's nothing to her at all. Halfway isn't fair to anyone. I refuse to play tug-of-war with my girl._

Helena steeled herself. It would be like setting a broken bone; it hurt like hell, but you had to be quick and brutal about it, or it would never heal.

"No. I'm sorry, Gray...you can't." She forbid her distant heartbreak to fray her voice. "But Anya's a lucky girl; she has your eyes."

He was motionless, his stare never breaking from her. For several agonizing moments, the major just breathed, the rise and fall of his chest visible from where Helena stood. There was something rising in his earthy eyes as he glanced from Helena to the child in her arms, something cold and miserable, and it tore her apart.

"Fine," he said at last, letting the word fall dead from his mouth. "If you want to be left alone, then _fine_...I won't darken your doorstep again."

He half-turned towards the door then, but still lingered, soundless, like he was mentally willing her to call him back.

_ Not this time, Major._

_ Not ever again._

She didn't even look at him. Instead, she just drifted over to the crib at the foot of her hospital bed and laid Anya into the soft pastel-coloured bedding. It was a closing gesture; Helena hoped it felt as final to Grayson as it did to her. She found herself falling back into her baby's green eyes, though they were drooping as Anya began to drowse off again...

"Oh. Major Vanders. You're visiting as well, I see."

Helena whirled around; it took only an instant to recognize her latest guest; there was simply no mistaking those fierce, husky-blue eyes. Adam Fenix had appeared in the door holding an enormous bouquet of flowers; she hadn't heard his approach.

In spite of his flawless posture that screamed _impeccable pedigree_, his expression was more than a little awkward. Grayson was looking at him like he had an extra head. Adam looked to be at an utter loss for a moment, then cleared his throat and bowed his head slightly.

"I apologize for interrupting, Helena. Perhaps I should return tomorrow..."

"Nonsense, sir," Helena said airily, straightening up from Anya's crib. She trained an even gaze on Grayson. "Vanders was just leaving."

It was impossible to slip anything past a Fenix; Adam glanced carefully from lieutenant to major, but made no comment. Grayson hesitated one last time, then merely nodded.

"Yes, I do have to go, unfortunately. Congratulations, Stroud," he said in his charming major's voice, though Helena could detect the twinge of pained contempt. "You'll make a wonderful mother for little Anya, I know."

Like a shadow, he slipped silently through the doorway and, Helena realized distantly, out of her life. Silence began to settle over the warmly-lit hospital room, but was summarily broken when Anya let loose a single gurgling shriek. It was enough to tug Helena and Adam back into the present.

"Okay, so I know you hate unnecessary acts of charity," Adam said from behind the floral explosion he'd brought. "But my wife informed me she would have my hide if I didn't have something to present upon visitation."

Eyeing the admittedly beautiful bouquet of orchids and lilies, Helena gave a snort of laughter and pointed to the table under the window where all the other bouquets had been left. There weren't many. "Well, sir, you may report back that the gesture did not go unappreciated."

It made for a slightly surreal scene as the high ranking officer wrestled with the heavy crystal vase and bouquet, placing it as carefully as he could on the table. The colourful arrangement of the Fenix flowers dwarfed the other offerings Helena had received thus far.

"Please, Helena, you just had a baby; I'm sure no one will mind if you just call me Adam." Adam straightened his expensive suit and faced her. "So, how are you feeling?"

"Oh, just about how you'd expect a new mother to feel." Helena braced her hands on her hips in the familiar pose all pregnant women mastered. Arching her spine, she sighed impatiently down at the unwanted remainder of her baby bump. "But once the damned doctor gives the green light for physical activity again, I'm going straight to the gym and working these last bloody pounds off."

Adam shook his head knowingly; it had been common knowledge that following the doctor's orders for 'plenty of rest' and 'mild exercise only' during all three of her terms had been immensely challenging for hyper-fit Helena Stroud.

As if she was suddenly aware that the attention wasn't focused completely on her anymore, Anya keened loudly from her crib. Functioning on pure maternal instinct, Helena felt herself sweep over to the crib to fuss over the wiggling infant. Adam joined her for his first glimpse of the Stroud progeny.

"Goodness, she's a carbon copy of her mother, isn't she?" Adam crossed his arms and peered down at the child like a scientist inspecting an unusually adorable petri dish. Sensing the spotlight of attention, Anya came fully awake and struggled happily against her blankets. "Did I hear Vanders call her Anya?"

Surprisingly, the name didn't even make Helena flinch. "You did."

"Lovely name, just lovely. And have you decided on any middle names, yet?"

Helena smiled inwardly; official things like middle names _would_ be something a high-born Fenix would care about. "Just one," she sighed, reaching into the crib to tuck one of her daughter's whirling fists back under the blanket. "Anya Callisto Stroud."

Adam raised his brows in a studious sort of way. "Callisto. How uncommon. It means 'most beautiful' in ancient Kashkuri, if I'm not mistaken."

"Congratulations, doc: you're the first one to figure that out. Most people just think it's _edgy_."

That earned her a quiet, distinguished laugh from her superior officer. After fighting alongside Adam Fenix in so many battles, it was beyond strange to see him relaxed in a casual situation like this.

_No, the intelligent bastard is never really _relaxed_. Calm, yes, but calculated. Anything but relaxed._

Helena's thoughts were proven before her eyes as Adam's smile faded just as easily as it had been formed. He coughed like he was in a prestigious library.

"Now, Helena, I would like to extend this to you, but before I do, I want to make sure you understand fully that I do not doubt your abilities as a mother in the slightest..."

"Oh, for the love of the COG, Adam," The lieutenant rolled her blue eyes; nothing drove her up the wall like a politely meandering Fenix. "Just spit it out."

The man took a moment to look sheepish, then swallowed. "The first few years are...wonderful. But they're hard, too, and you're a busy woman. If you ever need someone to watch over Anya for a few hours, my wife and I would be more than happy."

The unexpected gesture of kindness caught Helena off-guard, and she blinked. "Shit, Adam, I'm sure Elain already has her hands full with your little boy. I wouldn't want to intrude."

"Please, Marcus is nearly two now, and he's a profoundly _quiet_ child. Honestly, I wouldn't extend the offer unless I meant it."

Helena almost snorted incredulously at the idea, then reminded herself firmly that the typically stoic Fenix was being far more generous and kind than general platoon camaraderie required. "...Thank you, then. I'll be sure to keep it in mind."

Anya squawked; Helena was starting to appreciate her as her resident tension diffuser, and she leaned down to scoop her up out the crib. Without even really thinking, she put her daughter to her shoulder and bounced her gently.

"You know, they never warned me," she said at length.

Adam raised a mildly confused brow; a rare expression for the captain. "Warned you about what?"

"_This_," she made a bewildered face down at the happily gurgling bundle in her arms. "This... overwhelming tidal wave of insane instinctual _love_."

The older man gave a light, but genuine laugh. "Ah, yes. The millenia-old maternal urge. I assure you, it's perfectly natural."

"Perfectly _terrifying_, I think you mean."

Another mild chuckle; the captain shook his head, like his walled-off mind was slipping elsewhere. "I remember when I held Marcus for the first time." For a moment, Adam's face took on a strangely nostalgic look, like he was about to dip into some heart-warming, fuzzy-feeling story about his only son. But the shadow passed as quickly as it came, and he resumed his well-practiced neutral smile.

"Trust me, dear; when it's three in the morning, and you've spent an hour trying to convince the wailing little devil to eat a single spoonful of puréed banana, you're going to _need_ that tidal wave of motherly love."

The lieutenant gave a few breaths of laughter. After years of serving under the man in the battlefield, she still couldn't tell if the telling of jokes meant he was feeling more at ease, or getting closer to making his exit. They stood there in the silence that followed, but the awkwardness wasn't rising like it used to. Something about the bond of mutual parenthood, Helena was sure.

"...Would you like to hold her, Adam?"

For a moment, the captain just stared at her with a raised brow look that probably kept most lesser mortals at bay, but to Helena, it just seemed overwhelmed. He blinked rapidly, and Helena almost told him it was okay if he had to get going, then he nodded solemnly and held his arms out. His fellow Gear stepped forward and gingerly transferred her daughter into Adam's embrace.

He held the precious cargo with textbook execution, carefully supporting her fragile head and neck. As he looked her over, she accidentally pawed at his dangling COG tags with her flailing fists. They jingled, and her eyes went wide as dinner plates in awe of the foreign sound. Even the emotionless Fenix visage was rendered powerless; a smile softened the severe line of Adam's mouth, and he gently pinched the child's tiny hand between his thumb and forefinger.

"So strong. Just like her mother."

Adam dragged his blue eyes from Anya's overjoyed face to gaze long at Helena.

"Vanders was right, Lieutenant. She's lucky to have you as her mother," he said in the softest voice Helena had ever heard him put on. "Very lucky indeed."


	7. III: Nothing Fails, Part Two

**III.  
>Nothing Fails<strong>  
>(Part Two)<em><br>_

_my mamma said  
>that the worst thing in life was getting used to love,<br>knowing you're going to lose it all._

The cool sea winds seem to blow through Fesor Naval Base like the structures were made of paper. Beyond the L-shaped wharfs, docked warships jostled lazily in the deep waves, looming like huge sleeping beasts of the sea. The tides were relatively calm this early morning; perfect for embarkation, but something about how the water looked so black and endless, darker than even the night sky, made Anya uneasy.

That, and what she knew was waiting for her these next few days. But she was trying not to think too much about that.

As she hurried past the quiet piers, the young woman hoped desperately that her nerves weren't showing through to her mother. Major Helena Stroud stomped alongside her, utterly silent as they made their way to the north corner jetty. Of course, it wasn't long before Anya became aware of her mother's severe gaze on her, and she did her very best not to squirm under the hot spotlight.

"You know, I thought getting you and the other cadets out of the CIC to spend some time with the boys on front line was a good idea. But now I'm not so sure."

It was faint, but there was definitely the curl of a smile in the commanding officer's voice. Anya risked a sidelong glance. Tall and blonde, Helena strode easily along, looking more comfortable in her stiff fatigues than some of her fellow male Gears.

Anya was too busy with keeping up with her mother's wide strides to guess at what that was supposed to mean. Her black high heels weren't exactly field-certified. "What are you talking about?"

Helena's brows formed into knowing arches. "Oh, I saw the way my boys were looking at you at the training beaches last week. It's those damn heels they put you cadets in. I swear, your uniform is more of a moral booster than a bloody Allfather's speech."

Anya folded her arms protectively over her chest and shrunk down, feeling a horrified blush explode in her cheeks. "Ugh, no. Mom, stop."

"And the way you were always sitting with your cute lil' behind pushed out?" Helena chuckled. "Hell, I could have court martialed half of C Company for fraternization that day..."

"_Mom!_"

The major just shook her head, her laugh trailing off as she yanked up her fingerless gloves.

"Whether you intend to or not, dear, I won't have you corrupting my new recruits."

"Trust me, Mom," Anya sighed darkly. "I don't care about your new recruits."

They rounded a corner, Anya skipping ahead a few steps to keep pace with her mother. That omniscient look was creeping over Helena's features, and she clicked her tongue. "Or maybe it's my _corporals_ I should fear for..."

Instantly, the image of a stoic, blue-eyed boy flashed through Anya's mind, and as much as she hated it, she knew exactly which corporal her mother was referring to.

"Whatever," Anya lied quickly. "Marcus doesn't interest me,"

Helena snapped her fingers right in front of Anya's nose, suddenly serious. "_Corporal Fenix_," she corrected sharply, then snorted. "And you're lucky then, because let me tell you, the Fenix dynasty is the last one you want to get into."

"I...what? Who said anything about _getting into_ anything?" This conversation was mutating into something more awful with every word; Anya glanced frantically about to ensure no one had heard, but the smattering of faceless naval engineers that surrounded them didn't even seem to notice.

"...Besides, I thought you _liked_ Adam Fenix," she grumbled. "I mean, _Major_ Adam Fenix."

"I do. I have more respect for him than for every gold braid idiot I've ever met _combined_. But he's hard, Anya. That whole family is hard." A group of official-looking men Anya didn't recognize glanced up and waved as the Strouds breezed by. Smirking, Helena returned the gesture, then snorted. "Shit, remember when I was stationed in Acastu? I had to order Corporal Fenix to call home and talk to his father. _Order_, like it was bloody latrine duty."

Admittedly, that seemed a little demented to Anya. How many nights had she spent as a little girl waiting by the phone, begging the sitter to let her stay up just a few more minutes for Helena's all-important call.

Suddenly, the unwelcome image of a young Marcus Fenix sitting up in pajamas and waiting for his father wedged itself into Anya's brain, and she shook her head, feeling mildly disturbed.

"Yeah, this is really, really weird. Can we _please_ stop talking about the Fenixes?"

The remaining mirth in Helena's deep blue eyes faded, though her expression of effortless calm was evidently permanent. "Just trying to make a bit of light-hearted conversation, darling."

"Right. Well, don't."

Any other mother would have swooped in to reprimand such flippancy, but Helena just smirked over at her daughter.

"You're bitchy."

Anya refused to return the look, only raised her chin and walked a little faster. "I'm fine."

"You shouldn't be."

"...What?"

It was Helena's turn to be aloof and stare coolly ahead. "What you _should_ be is scared shitless. Just like the rest of us," she grunted. "Anything else is emotional suppression and, as so clearly demonstrated by the Fenixes, not healthy."

"Okay, okay," Anya relented, hating how easy she was to read. She took a moment to inhale deeply. "So I'm scared shitless. It _is_ my first real mission."

Helena nodded emphatically, like they'd finally arrived at a well-known conclusion. "That it is. But _Kalona_ is a good ship with a highly competent crew, Anya. You'll be two-hundred klicks away from the action, safe and sound in a cozy CIC roost. Besides, I'm sure the vast majority of the bullets will be flying in C Company's direction anyways."

Anya swung a slow, bewildered stare on her mother. "_That's_ what's scaring the shit out of me."

The major did a subtle double-take, then let out that gruff, staccato laugh that confirmed she spent too much time around men with thick necks and crude senses of humour. "You don't have to worry your pretty head about me, dear. I'll be damned if I let a couple snivelling Indies do me in. And will you look at _that_..."

The woman beamed cheerily as they rounded the last corner and emerged at last on the north jetty. "The big sisters themselves."

Any protest to her mother's disturbingly carefree demeanour was silenced as Anya looked up. Before her, two massive warships lulled back and forth in the restless sea, their bows towering over the many people hurrying about on the docks below. It was still dark, but the clean, pre-dawn glow was enough to make out the words painted in white across the hulls: _CNV POMEROY _over one, _CNV KALONA_ over the other.

"Wonderful," Helena cocked her head, hands on her hips as she scanned the dual feats of naval engineering. "I don't know about you dear, but I can't wait to get my ass on that floating bucket of bolts."

"Major Stroud, ma'am!"

A younger man was jogging up out of the crowd; Anya recognized as one of her fellow support officers . He stopped before them and whipped up into snappy salute, clearly more than a bit nervous.

"Ma'am! The Gears are lined up and ready to embark, ma'am!"

Helena lifted her hand at the greenhorn, gently indicating that such vigour was not necessary at such an early hour.

"Very good, Private," she said gruffly. "Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

The major straightened up and strode evenly through the throngs of personnel, her presence alone serving as a powerful crowd-splitter. Once again, Anya fought to keep up with the force of nature that was her mother, though she had a markedly harder time cutting through the people. When at last they broke through to the other side, Anya found herself in front of a long line of Gears, all waiting to embark on CNV _Kalona_.

Taking a steadying breath, the support officer set her shoulders back—just like her mother always told her to—and tried to make her way to the warship's boarding brow without thinking about her audience of young soldiers. As much as Helena admonished her for it, Anya couldn't help but be somewhat intimidated by the men, especially in such great numbers. They weren't poised and alert like they'd been on the training beaches—hell, some of them weren't even awake—but even without the massive armour plates and full Lancer kits, there was a silent, ever-present sort of determination that permeated the air around them, and it freaked Anya out.

And of course, that feeling seemed to double when she passed a certain section of the line-up: where one Marcus Fenix was standing. She tried her hardest to keep her thoughts rigid and on-task, but she found them straying to the corporal as she strode by, and her eyes could only follow.

He was young, only a year or so older than her, but he emanated the same sort of air that his father—and, come to think of it, her mother—did; that ferociously quiet presence that could flood a whole room with a single flick of the eyes. Luckily, however, he didn't seem to be showing her the same interest: his stark blue gaze was transfixed on Helena Stroud as she blazed by.

"Gears—ten-_shun_!"

As the major marched past the men of C Company, Fenix snapped up into stiff salute, his fellow soldiers following suit. The strain in some of their faces struck a chord in Anya; it had never occurred to her that muscle-bound Gears might be just as unnerved by her mother as her. Not Fenix, though. He just looked immensely proud to be there, standing tall in his dark camo fatigues, although his stern expression suggested he observed his duties with lethal seriousness. He was actually quite handsome, Anya realized suddenly; if only he would just crack a smile...

Her mother returned the salute, the sharp motion dragging Anya back to the present, and headed up _Kalona's_ gangway, posture casual as an afternoon stroll. With a start, Anya realized she had to actually follow the major onto the painted steel behemoth.

She then felt a salty sea breeze sting her stockinged legs, and was distantly reminded of her mother's comments on her officer's rig. As the young officer hustled up onto the ageing brow, she prayed to the Allfathers that her black patent pumps wouldn't slip on the rusted walkway.

* * *

><p>Minutes dragged by, and while the starting moments had been saturated with that cinematic feeling of drama and farewell, the fact of the matter was that it actually took a long-ass time to get two ships the size of <em>Kalona<em> and _Pomeroy_ out to sea. Anya had spent a while getting her things in order and bunking in with the other support officers in the womens' cabin. But there was only so much time you could waste in the cramped quarters, and she had inevitably been drawn back out to the ship's deck.

The sun seemed about ready to rise in full now, the skyline glowing with a pure golden hue as the sea slowly warmed to the new day. Anya was two decks up; leaning against the guard rail, she watched the bustle of activity both on _Kalona_ and the docks below. One floor down, a thick ring of Gears had amassed, pressing impatiently around each other to wave at the crowds of families back on the pier. It was such a mixture of emotions: this was the first serious mission for many of the young soldiers, and the manic, ear-to-ear smiles barely contained their obvious pride. But each smile was bittersweet, tinged slightly by the sobering reality that this was war, and at the end of the day, someone wasn't coming home.

"Ah, now you're the one doing the ogling, hm? I see how it is."

As usual, Anya flinched like a rabbit at her mother's sudden and loud voice. It seemed to be the major's favourite way of making her presence known. Helena laughed, then joined her daughter at the rail, arms crossed in an official sort of way and eyes raking the crowd below.

Anya heaved an exasperated sigh. "No. No, I'm not."

Raising her brow slowly, Helena continued her tense scrutiny of the amalgamation of Gears and navy personnel that populated the deck below. "Of course. Just like you haven't scoped out Fenix and his buddy yet."

The major gestured over to the far end of _Kalona's_ bow, indicating two soldiers who had seemed to distance themselves somewhat from the mob of their fellow soldiers. Just like everyone else, they had their backs to the upper deck; one was waving down happily, while the other just stood stiffly with his arms at his side.

"What? No! I...how can you even recognize them?" Anya squeaked, squinting through the honeyed light of the sunrise.

"Easy," Helena sniffed. "Check out who they're waving to."

Tracking the Gears' rough line of sight, Anya picked out what looked to be two separate families standing by the docks: a couple, arms waving with such enthusiasm it looked like they might snap off, and a solitary man standing several feet away, utterly motionless.

"Is that—"

"Eduardo and Eva Santiago, I think. Good people." Helena shook her head. " And bang-up parents too, if their boys are anything to go by."

"No, not them," Anya frowned. "The man there. Is that Major Fenix?"

"Who, the man with a massive radius of empty space around him? Yes, that would indeed be the patriarch of the Fenix clan. Can't you tell by the way he's got his arms crossed?"

"I guess...why aren't they waving to each other?"

From the corner of her eye, Anya saw her mother turn an all-knowing glance on her. "Like I said, kiddo. Hard family."

Anya gave a tiny nod as if she understood perfectly, but in all honesty, she couldn't figure out the Fenixes for the life of her.

"Marc..._Corporal Fenix_...he lost his mother when he was a kid, didn't he?"

Helena didn't reply immediately, taking a moment instead to brace the thick sole of her boot on the lower rail and star hazily off into space. "Yes. Elain went missing when he was thirteen or so."

Anya swallowed. Her eyes drifted wistfully over Fenix and Santiago, still standing resolutely by the prow. "So, he's just like me, then."

"I..." For once, Helena seemed to stumble over her daughter's words as she realized what she meant. After a moment, the major just nodded. "I suppose you are."

The conversation hung in the air, suspended with the morose inevitability of a question that would never be answered; a wound that would never heal. For young Anya, it was too much.

"Mom...Can I ask you a serious question?"

"Hm. Maybe."

"...You're not going to like it."

At this, Helena locked a wary blue stare on her. "Anya, I told you: Operation Leveler is top secret. Even I don't know everything."

Anya winced; her mother really couldn't think of anything but soldier work. "No, I know. It's...it's not about the mission."

Helena quirked a brow. "Okay. What _is_ it about, then?"

The blonde youth opened her mouth, then felt it run dry and merely swallowed. Her gaze dropped to her feet of its own accord, and she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Mom. I know I've asked you about my father every year for my entire life. And I know you tell me to shove it up my ass every time..."

Understanding dawned on Helena, and she sighed, her face suddenly a mask of weariness. "But you're going to ask again."

"Please...I just want a name. You don't have to tell me about what he did...or even how you knew him..."

"Why?" Helena was managing to keep her tone low and business-like. "You don't know him, he doesn't know you, and that will never change. Giving you some meaningless name won't make him magically appear and start acting like a good father."

Anya blinked indignantly. "It's not meaningless to me."

If she'd grazed an emotional nerve in Helena, it never showed, because the major simply sighed and slipped back from the railing; her eternal way of showing that the conversation was dead in the water.

Inside, Anya screamed with frustration, but experience reminded her that losing her temper wasn't the way to reach her goal. Taking in a lungful of salty ocean air, she counted to five, then turned to face her retreating mother.

"I thought you said things should never be left unsaid," her voice was soft, barely audible above the rocking waves.

"I mean...isn't that why you forced Marcus to call his dad in Acastu?"

For once, Helena proved that she wasn't all steel and ice: the words seemed to snag the woman like a rope, and she stopped. The mere fact that she hadn't chided Anya for using Fenix's first name gave the youth hope, but seconds passed, and not a word was uttered. Anya began to wonder if her mother was just going to march off again when she spoke at last.

"Sometimes, Anya, you fall for a man you're not supposed to. Who the law says you're not _allowed_ to. You're in mad, stupid, reckless love, and no one thinks it's a good idea. No one except you and him. So you look at each other, and you decide whether it's worth it or not. And if it is, then you forget everyone else, and do what you damn well please." Helena swallowed, her breath coming just a little harder than it had a few minutes ago. "No apologies, no regrets."

The strange, almost final-sounding speech settled over the two of them, and as the day's first rays of light spilled over both mother and daughter, Anya felt like she'd unearthed something Helena had been holding deep inside for many years.

"I don't understand," she replied at length. She deeply wanted to approach her mother fully, but was too afraid of what she might see on the older woman's face. "Was that supposed to be a hint about my father, or advice on picking a future husband?"

Mercifully, the unintentional humour seemed to build Helena back up from her moment of vulnerability, and she let out a hearty bark of laughter.

"If you're anything like me, dear?" the major cooed, swaggering back up to stand with Anya at the rail. "Both."

Anya rolled her eyes, though she was too grateful for the levity to truly resent her mother's teasing.

"So..." she sighed, feeling far less overwhelmed than she'd anticipated. "Then, you're saying my father was a Gear."

She half-expected to get another snap on the nose for implying such a forbidden concept, but none came. Instead, Helena merely stretched her arms lazily out in front of her, each joint cracking thoughtfully. This new, non-disciplinary version of her mother was beginning to worry Anya.

"I'm saying..." Helena breathed deep, brows furrowed in grim acceptance of how much she'd given away. "I'm saying we'll talk about this after."

"What do you mean, _after?_ After Operation Leveler?"

Another pause, but the major seemed to find more strength in her words. "After Operation Leveler."

For once, Anya let a metric ounce of hope trickle through her heart. "Is...that a promise?"

Helena spent another precious moment staring out into the rising sun, the pure morning light setting sparks to the inky green waves.

"Yes, darling. That's a promise."

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


	8. IV: Halycon, Part One

**IV.  
>Halcyon<br>**(Part One)

_I swear to God,  
>I heard the earth inhale<br>moments before it spat its rain down on me._

She inhaled deeply. For a moment, the vibrant profusion of scents from the surrounding streets—flowerboxes, sweet gasoline, and fresh bread from a baker's midnight batch—almost made her forget where she was, and who she was with.

_Almost_. Anya bit her lip and glanced up at the man whose arm she clung gently to.

"So...what's this place called again?"

His face was barely visible over the upturned collar of his expensive black pea coat, but Anya was sure she saw him roll his ice-blue eyes. "Nice try. I told you, it's a _secret_."

She threw a coy snort of laughter as if she considered the whole thing a cute joke, but on the inside, she was far more excited than she wanted to give away. In the weeks following the end of the Pendulum Wars, she found herself spending more and more time with one Marcus Fenix. Of course, they were both still in the ranks, and fraternization laws were no more lax in peacetime, but ever since the mutual agonies of Aspho Fields, such things had seemed to matter less and less to the two soldiers.

And now the Gear had driven her to Ephyra's luxurious Tsuraline district, and it was well after sunset, and they were walking along the cobbled streets to "a little place he knew", and it was all a _secret_. Anya had never been one to lose her head over such frivolous notions, but something was making her feel a bit giddy tonight, and it certainly wasn't the crisp evening air.

Suddenly, they came up to a gap between two elaborate limestone buildings, and Marcus slowed. Anya looked up at him again; for once, he wasn't wearing his trademark bandana, and seeing him without it somehow made him easier to be around.

"Here," he said, raising his chin at the unexceptional alleyway. The narrow lane was immaculate, but the golden glow of the Tsuraline gaslamps didn't quite penetrate the lush darkness beyond. For a split second, Anya hesitated, but then quickly remembered who she was dealing with. _Did you really expect him to waltz into some ritzy lounge where everyone and their dog will recognize him? Get a grip._

Yes, _hidden back alley saloon_ had Marcus' name written all over it. He must have sensed her trepidation, though, because he held his ground. Anya just tucked her hands around his strong arm and gave him a playful nudge with her hip.

"Lead on, Mr. Fenix."

He gave her a look that was almost a smile and steered them both down the alley. They took two turns, then Anya found herself descending a short flight of stairs towards a slim bronze door that looked like it lead to one of the buildings' basements. The words _Guilt & Co._ were inscribed on the door's burnished face.

Marcus pulled back the evidently heavy door with some effort. "After you, _Miss Stroud_."

Once again, Anya was hit by a flood of pleasant smells, but these were closer and more pungent than the scents of the Tsuraline streets above. She could pick out wafts of exotic coffee and cigar smoke, but the rest was just an unidentifiable cloud that swirled around her as they treaded down a narrow hall. A woman was standing by a tall table at the end, a wide purple velvet curtain hanging behind her.

"Mr. Fenix! Good to see you again, sir."

The gorgeous, well-groomed hostess startled Anya as she flashed a dazzling smile at their approach. They stopped before the curtain, and the the woman tilted her head somewhat, as if Anya's presence perplexed her. "My, and you've brought some lovely company tonight. Your usual place, then?"

"That'd be great, Liselle. Thanks."

"You're quite welcome, sir. Just this way."

With a deft flourish, Liselle pulled back the satin folds of the curtain, and they followed her into a large, low-ceilinged lounge crowded with overstuffed furniture and quietly conversing patrons. Anya could barely see through the haze of smoke and dim red lighting, but it wasn't long before they were shrugging off their coats and setting down in a small, cushy booth. It was remarkably private, positioned in a corner somewhat out of the way of the rest of Guilt & Co.'s murmuring tables.

Liselle almost blinded Anya with another smile as she laid a slim leather-bound booklet on the slick mahogany table. "Here's tonight's list of specials. Shall I start you off with the usual, sir?"

"Not tonight. Just a glass of the Sarfuth Burgundy will be fine."

The hostess nodded and turned expectantly to Anya, who shrunk down in her seat a bit.

"Um." She hadn't the foggiest idea about wines—hell, she was only just of legal drinking age—but she sensed that ordering her usual gin and juice would be a major faux-pas in a posh joint like this, and the last thing she wanted to do was embarrass Marcus. Maybe she could get by with just a fancy coffee...

She must have looked as trapped as she felt, because Marcus cleared his throat softly.

"Make that a bottle of Burgundy, Liselle," he said, blue eyes drifting warily over Anya.

"Excellent. Your drinks will arrive shortly."

With a twist of her patent black heels, the hostess was off; Anya smiled sheepishly.

"Thanks, Marcus."

The man shrugged. "Don't worry about it. The wine list here is more pretentious than a chairman's retirement toast."

Anya had discovered that she could gauge Marcus' comfort level at any given time by the volume of jokes he tossed out. Maybe this place made him loosen up more than she realized.

"So," Anya wandered, lacing her fingers under her chin and glancing about. "You come here often, I take it?"

"I guess I must."

Anya nodded, but she could easily guess as to why a place like Guilt & Co. would appeal to Marcus. A few sweeps of the regal, yet cozy lounge made Anya realize that the whole place was dotted with minor celebrities: television personalities, local theatre stars, even a few lofty politicians. And yet the mood of the sprawling, smoky room was overwhelmingly private. Since the moment they'd entered, Marcus Fenix, renowned war hero and Embry Star recipient, hadn't gotten so much as a blink from the other patrons; his body language said he was massively relieved by that.

Minutes passed easily, but it wasn't long before their gazes snagged on each other. Most people were terrified of silence, making sure that any lull in conversation was instantly killed with chatter, no matter how meaningless. Anya even classified herself as one of those people, but things were different with Marcus. In fact, most of their time together was spent in utter quiet. Sometimes the man seemed nervous, sometimes content, and sometimes he wasn't really even there, but there was an innate relief they both found in the simple act of sharing each other's company.

When two people lost as much as they had, words were no longer needed to understand each other: the bond of mutual grief was far more powerful. And so they sat for many long minutes, as comfortable in the silence between them as any other couple was in casual conversation.

It wasn't long before another woman who Anya didn't recognize swept over with a tall bottle of blood-red wine, poured it into two crystal glasses, then rushed off with a smile just as swiftly as she came. They raised their glasses, but said nothing, holding each others' eyes for only a moment before drinking.

There was nothing to be said: it was the unspoken acceptance that every toast they'd ever make would be for Helena Stroud and Carlos Santiago, and them alone. The wine was sweeter than Anya had expected, and she savoured the heavy taste on her tongue.

Setting his drink down, Marcus propped his elbows up on the table, his wide frame filling the space efficiently. He was only twenty-one, but in the years following Operation Leveler, he had shed the lanky look all tall teens had, trading it for a much more solid, powerful-looking physique.

"So...there was something you wanted to talk about."

Anya stared mid-sip. "There was?"

"On the drive down. You said you had a bone to pick with me."

"Oh." Realization dawned on Anya as her words came back to her, but her face immediately fell when she remembered exactly what bone she wanted to pick. "_Oh_...Right."

For once, Marcus let himself slip out of that stiff-backed posture he meticulously kept and leaned back in the booth, arms crossing over his broad chest. He merely raised a single expectant brow.

"Well," Anya began, doing her best to keep any curtness from her tone. "I got a letter from the Sovereign Bank of Tyrus this morning."

Marcus blinked. "Okay."

"They wanted to thank me for paying off my monthly loan. But...it's all a bit mysterious, seeing as I haven't sent them my payment for _last_ month yet." Anya kept a hard, steady gaze on her companion. "Doesn't that sound _mysterious_ to you?"

He coughed quietly, and developed a sudden fascination with his faceted wine glass. "_Very_."

Anya cocked her head and rubbed her temple. "You're a terrible liar, Marcus. This is the second time my bills have been magically paid off. I know it's you."

His blue eyes flicked up to her. He had the same sort of look Anya guessed she'd had when Liselle hunted her down for her drink order. The man must have realized that anything he said would only incriminate himself further, so he just pressed his lips into a tight line and watched her for her next move.

"I'm asking you to stop." Anya winced inwardly; she was painfully aware of how ungratefully harsh she sounded. "Look...I appreciate what you're trying to do, Marcus, but you don't need to shell out for me. I've still got some of my inheritance from Mom."

Marcus gave her a distantly concerned look, as if he didn't want to insult her mother's memory. "Then what's with all the debt?"

The answer stuck in Anya's throat. While Helena Stroud had been a celebrated war hero, the truth was that she had still been a single mother on a modest salary, and the money left behind hadn't been much even before it fell to Anya. Now, after nearly two years of trying to make ends meet on her own Gear's pay, she found herself looking at more bills than her mother's dwindling estate could stave off.

"I'm making out just fine, Marcus. Really."

He had on that quietly omniscient gaze of his that said he wasn't convinced. _Yeah, so neither of us can lie worth shit. Let's just let each other be_.

Anya bit her lip and sighed into her drink.

"...And I'll pay you back."

A muscle in Marcus' temple twitched. "Like hell you will. It's _stupid_ how much money my dad's hoarded up. I could probably buy you a whole frigging house in East Barricade without him knowing the difference." He shook his head, as if the magnitude of his own wealth baffled and embarrassed him. "Just...consider it all an early birthday present."

"A _six thousand_ dollar birthday present, Marcus?"

"Yes. Deal with it." The man took a nonchalant sip of Burgundy. "Happy Twentieth, high roller."

Anya opened her mouth to protest, but the way Marcus lowered his chin at her told her, in no uncertain terms, that the topic was no longer up for discussion.

And then, another, much more subtle realization tugged at her, but it shut her up more effectively than even the sternest glare from a Fenix could: he knew her birthday was coming up. The more the woman thought about it, the more she realized that there were very few people alive who did.

—

Once again, Anya cursed herself for combining high heels and alcohol in the same night.

Just like a few hours earlier, she and Marcus were arm in arm and making their way down the sidewalk. This time, they were only going from his gleaming black SUV to the doorstep of her modest apartment building, but Anya was having a notably harder time traversing the cobbled walk than she had before.

Marcus, ever the gentleman, said absolutely nothing about her slight instability. They'd managed to finish off the sweet, expensive Burgundy together—Marcus wouldn't let her see the tab, but she had counted at least five twenties on the table—but after waiting only an hour or two, Marcus was sober enough to drive her home, while Anya was still rather unsteady.

_Well, that's a Gear's metabolism for you..._

They arrived at the steps rising to the building's foyer. Marcus seemed reluctant to let her off his arm, but she wrestled up her best _I swear I'm sober_ smile for his benefit.

"Well, thank you, Marcus. Again." Anya rummaged around in her coat pocket for her keys. "I had a great time."

She tried to keep looking preoccupied, but she couldn't help but feel his bright eyes boring into her.

"I'm serious, Anya. Are you sure you're getting along okay?"

He seemed dangerously close to another attempt at shoveling more of his fortune into her unconsenting pockets. Maybe, Anya thought suddenly, he felt like it was the only way he could help. She did her best to imbue her smile with confidence, but the corners of her mouth were getting a bit sore.

"Yes, I'm sure. Money's really not that tight, I promise. Besides, it'll only get easier now that the war's over. Right?"

"Okay, fine. I won't bug you about money anymore." His brow knit down at her. He seemed frustrated at his inability to find the right words for what he wanted to say. "But...what about _you?_ Are _you_ okay?"

Anya was a bit taken aback by the man's sudden personal concern for her wellbeing. Then, her mind took her back to the night after their Embry Star award ceremony, just weeks after the battle of Aspho Fields.

They'd been corralled into a painfully formal dinner with Adam Fenix, Dom and Maria, but it wasn't long before Marcus and Anya decided they needed to escape the suffocating pomp. By sunrise, the pair had ended up at her old apartment, too drunk and hurting to do anything but tangle up on her couch and grieve silently for the family they had lost. It had been the longest night of her life, but it was the first time she'd found real sleep since the night her mother died.

"You know, I'm sure I'm still just as _un-okay_ as you are," she chuckled sadly. "But nights like this make it easier."

The man just looked helpless for a few moments. He seemed to be teetering on the edge of saying something profound. Finally, he just exhaled slowly and gently gripped her shoulder.

"If you need anything, anything at _all_, you call me, understand?" If Anya didn't know him better, she'd almost think he was angry. But he wasn't; the severe tone and iron-set jaw were only the byproducts of his violent need to personally take care of every human on the planet. "Doesn't matter what time. Call me at three in the morning if you want to. I don't care. Okay?"

Whether is was his gentle offer, or his even gentler touch, something inside Anya finally just _settled_, and for once, she felt a genuine, face-consuming smile creep over her features.

"I'll remember that...Thank you, Marcus." She reached up and took the hand that he'd laid on her shoulder. "Ditto for you."

His immovable expression flickered for an instant, as if it had never ocurred to him that he might also need to lean on someone, least of all poor motherless Anya. Maybe, he'd been branded so much with the dreaded _hero_ label that it was the only mode he could function in anymore.

_Yeah, two years later, and you're still just as screwed up as I am. But we're screwed up together, so maybe that makes it better somehow._

"Alright," he said after a long moment. His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, looking a bit thrown. "I...Thanks."

She watched him for a moment longer, wondering, then threw caution to the wind. Stepping forward, the woman went up on tip-toe with her hands on his warm chest for support, and planted a soft kiss on Marcus' cheek.

The Gear accepted the token of affection without complaint, but he still froze like a statue. His skin was warm against Anya's lips, and she pulled back, feeling a hot rush of nerves follow in the wake of her spontaneous move. As always, his handsome, yet stoic features didn't betray what he was thinking, but for once, he didn't seem at a complete loss.

"...Goodnight, Anya," he said quietly as she stepped gracefully back out of his personal space. "I'll call."

Somehow, that felt like a step taken, no matter how small. Anya nodded, content. "I'd like that. Goodnight, Marcus."

—

Within minutes, she was hoisting open her apartment door and flicking on the lights in her small, but cozy abode. She didn't have to look in the mirror to know she had a big dumb grin on her face.

"You're drunk," she said sternly to herself, like it would prove something about her current emotional state. But the truth was, she didn't feel like some swooning schoolgirl; there was no influx of stomach butterflies, no hammering heart. She just felt _content_. The woman sighed happily, then nearly tripped on her own feet down the hall.

_Okay, but I really am a bit tipsy._

Rolling her eyes at herself, she kicked off her too-high heels, padded off to her cramped kitchen and poured herself a glass of water from the faucet.

Fifteen minutes later, much of the cottony haze had been washed away from Anya's mind. She was just starting in on her second glass when her phone rang, and she jumped like a spooked rabbit.

She glanced at the clock hanging above her stove: it was just after four in the morning. Furrowing her brow, Anya grabbed the phone out of its cradle and put it gingerly to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Anya. It's me."

For a moment, Anya's heart fluttered slightly. While she hadn't doubted Marcus when he said he'd call, she certainly hadn't expected him to call so soon. But she'd heard a strange twinge in the man's tone. Some sort of air-blast hum in the background made it sound like he was driving, or walking by heavy traffic. Something was off.

"Oh. Uh, hey. What's up?"

"Where are you?"

"I...my kitchen," Anya replied warily. "Why?"

"Have you heard this?"

"Heard _what?_"

She just could make out the tinny sound of radio chatter over the line; that confirmed he was in his car, at least.

"Shit. Look, turn on your TV."

"What? What do you—"

"Do it. _Please_. I...I can't explain right now."

Yes, something was seriously wrong. Marcus hadn't sounded this disturbed since the battle at Aspho. Maybe even worse. The hair on the back of Anya's neck bristled, and she set her glass of water down on the countertop with a stark clunk.

"Marcus, you're scaring me. What the hell is going on?"

There was a ragged, agitated sigh. He sounded just as freaked out as Anya felt. And that frightened her more than anything else could.

"I don't know, Anya...No one does. Just turn your TV on, and no matter what you see, stay put. I'm coming back to get you."


	9. IV: Halcyon, Part Two

**IV.  
>Halcyon<strong>  
>(Part Two)<p>

_and I swear to God,  
>in this light and on this evening...<em>

The roar of the car engine. The flying shadows cast by the passing street lamps. The genuine leather seat creasing under her white-knuckle grip. Every sense, sight, and sound in Anya's world was tunneled, etched out in hyper-sharp focus. The sound of the radio was the only thing that seemed unreal, the voices pouring from it in a hazy blur like the cloud of cigar smoke in Guilt & Co.

"...Reports pouring in from many sources...Horrific eye-witness accounts..."

_ Oh God. Oh God._

"...Does not appear to be Indie retribution...Unconfirmed. Government officials declaring international emergency..."

_ This has been happening all night. People have been dying _all night_._

"...Responding forces...completely overwhelmed..."

The words streaked like wildfire across her numb mind, stark and surreal: _Global. Unknown species. Genocide_.

"...Emerging from the ground...Planet-wide death toll rising into the millions—"

"Oh my god, Marcus, turn it off. Please just _turn it off_."

Her companion hesitated; for an awful moment, she thought he was going to insist on keeping the radio on, but then he reached over and punched the off switch.

For the first time in years, Marcus wasn't the picture of unshakable calm. He had been hunched anxiously over the steering wheel for the entire drive, pale gaze darting over the road like he expected each passing car to erupt in violent flames. Having irritably ditched his woolen pea coat shortly after retrieving Anya from her apartment, he had the sleeves of his black dress shirt rucked up around his elbows; his slightly disheveled collar was undone to the third button, just barely revealing the gleaming tops of his COG tags.

While his eyes never left the rushing pavement, his fingers would occasionally reach down to his hip to grope for something, prompting him to heave a frustrated sigh every time they came up empty. It wasn't until the third or forth time he cycled through the peculiar motion that Anya realized he was grabbing instinctively for his sidearm.

She must have been staring, because Marcus turned a slow, subtle glance over to her in the passenger's seat.

"You okay?"

It generally baffled her how calm he could sound, even in the worst of situations, but now, there was more than a hint of stress in his deep voice.

"No." Burying her face in her hands, she let loose a tortured sigh. "No. I'm not. Where...where are we going, again?"

"Dad's place," Marcus rumbled, eyes straight ahead again. Anya couldn't help but notice how he never referred to his grand estate in the East Barricade as _home_. "Safer."

Anya pressed her lips into a thin line. As much as she wanted to stay by Marcus' side, even if just to avoid being left alone during this planet-wide nightmare, something about being dragged suddenly into his private life under such immensely unpleasant circumstances made her feel as uncomfortable as he looked.

"Marcus...Don't feel like you have to..."

"You heard the radio: cities everywhere are getting massive quakes. It's better if you stay out of your apartment," Marcus muttered, the determined set of his jaw suggesting the matter was decided. "Besides, I want to talk to Dad about...all this."

She could hear it then: whenever the subject of his father came up, a strange sort of stiffness always chilled Marcus' voice. But now, his stilted tone carried an accusing weight; disgust, even. The woman hesitated. After losing her mother so easily, it was utterly beyond Anya how someone could resent their only surviving parent like Marcus did. But then again, her mother had always warned her; the Fenixes were a different breed.

"Marcus..._would_ your dad know something about this?"

The man's features twisted into the first scowl Anya had seen him make all night. Yes, the Fenixes were a different breed indeed.

"I sure as hell hope not."

Something beyond the windshield caught Marcus' eye then, and his foot eased down on the brake pedal. Anya leaned over to catch a glimpse of whatever it was.

On the side of the road, a sparse crowd was amassing in front of a windowed electronics store, even spilling out into the road as more people gathered. A wall of televisions beamed lifeless blue light over their frozen faces; as the SUV coasted by, Anya could make out footage of shaking Ravens, walls of flame, and entire streets simply collapsing into the abyss.

"Oh, God."

They were all enraptured by the terrifying images, each news clip running more like a mini horror film than a real life report. Suddenly, every screen flickered to a single clip: a perfectly normal highway, cars rolling along the four lanes without incident for several seconds, when a circle of cracks punched through the asphalt. The street then swelled and heaved like the pavement had been liquified, before cratering completely. Cars swerved to avoid the gaping black hole; moments later, and a monstrous behemoth unlike anything Anya had ever imagined clawed slowly out from the gloom. It looked like a massive, horrible spider, gnashing its disgusting maw as dozens of pale-skinned, hulking humanoids spilling out from the hole beneath it. The monsters were armed, and they began to lay waste to the civilians around them.

The video cut harshly out to another clip, but the damage was done; Anya could barely breathe.

Suddenly, the glass in front of the televisions shattered, causing the whole crowd to flinch back. Anya blinked, her brain attempting to make sense of what it had just witnessed, when she realized that a cinderblock had been heaved into the window from the back of the group. Several young men, their grey, oversized-hoodies drawn up around their faces, rushed up from the now-scattering crowd, marched over the cracked glass and began ransacking the store.

"You gotta be friggin' kidding me..." Marcus' voice had dropped to an ill-tempered growl. "Less than a day in, and we've already started looting."

The needle on the car's speedometer fell another tick; Marcus' features were getting that distant look that read _injurious justice_, but Anya shot out to grab him by his thick wrist. "Marcus, _no_. You'd be outnumbered at least five to one."

"Not quite." His icy, implacable gaze remained locked on the looters. One man, evidently the gang's leader, stood guard by the ravaged storefront, brandishing an aluminum baseball bat at the remnants of the crowd. "I think I count for at least three."

Anya tugged desperately at his rolled-up sleeve. "Okay, as your superior officer, I'm going to advise strongly against th—"

Something hurtled out of the darkness, and Anya shrieked as the windshield in front of her exploded into a white sunburst of cracks. Uttering a single, vicious curse, Marcus slammed the car into a screeching halt, wrenched open his door, and vaulted out into the gloomy street.

"_Marcus!_"

It was a lost cause, she knew. Too stunned by the sudden assault to act, Anya remained rooted to the passenger's seat, but the obliterated windshield prevented her from seeing Marcus or the thuggish head looter.

"Haha, that's right, asshole!" She knew instinctively that the drawl was too high-pitched to be her Gear. "You wanna get involved? Come _on!_"

There was the crunch of boots on glass; a couple of looters who didn't have their arms full of stolen stereos were lingering by the shattered storefront, watching.

"You don't want me involved."

Marcus, unmistakably. Anya threw her head back against the leather headrest, groaning inwardly. Part of her wanted to fly out to make sure someone had his back—no matter what the Gear's blind confidence claimed or how young these toublemakers looked, five or more against one were dubious odds for even a Gear—but another, much larger part was too frightened and overwhelmed to even steal a peek at the scene playing out on the deserted street.

Logically, however, she knew she should be more afraid for the poor looters than for Marcus.

"Aw, you upset I hurt your pretty new_AGH_—What the hell, get your hands off me, bitch! I'll—"

The whole SUV bounced as something crashed heavily into the hood.

"Holy shit, get OFF me! You're not the law!"

"No, I'm not," Marcus' muffled snarl floated through the chilly air. "If I was, I would probably get into an awful lot of trouble for doing _this_."

The looter tried to spit something unintelligible back, but was swiftly interrupted by a dull, sickening thud that made the car's metal frame shudder again. Cringing, Anya envisioned heavy elbows and sensitive temple bones. Whatever had happened, the thug's mouth had been thoroughly shut.

"Only going to say this once: round up your buddies, leave all this shit, and get the hell out of here," Marcus said, his voice imbued with that concise _just try me_ tone he so deftly wielded on the battlefield. "Go home and lock up instead, because I guarantee things are about to get a lot worse. For everyone."

Anya swallowed; her companion's words must have struck the same dark chord in the looter as they did in her, because there was no venomous reply. The SUV swayed one last time as a weight scrambled off the hood,

"Come on, boys, leave the damn radios. Let's just get the hell out of dodge." The thug's gang cussed and spat violently, but it wasn't long before they split, their harsh voices becoming little more than a pack of rapidly receding footsteps.

A moment later, and Marcus was planting himself back in the driver's seat and yanking the door closed. Anya took precious seconds to scan her friend for scrapes, bruises; any sign that he'd been hurt. She hadn't heard anything to suggest the looter put up much resistance, but she couldn't help but worry what effect a fresh black eye might have on Adam Fenix when they breezed into Marcus' estate. But other than the one muscle flickering in his jaw, the man hardly looked like he'd been out for a brisk stroll, let alone a minor scrap with a street thug.

"Marcus, are you—"

"Don't. I'm fine."

With that, he pressed the gas and wheeled back onto the street proper, leaning slightly to see around the spiderweb of cracks. They sped through six empty blocks before he finally glanced over at the passenger's seat.

"You still okay?"

Whatever was left of the alcohol and adrenaline in Anya's system poured out in a snort of laughter. "Oh, yeah. Best date I've ever been on. You really know how to show a girl a good time."

Any other man would have laughed back, maybe even quipped about how cute she looked when she was terrified. But not Marcus; he just stared straight ahead like he hadn't heard anything past her confirmation of remaining unharmed. His brows were furrowed in an expression that suggested his rising stress was beginning to cause him physical pain.

They came to an intersection, a row of hot red lamps instructing them to stop, and Marcus guided the car to a halt._ End of the world, and we're still obeying traffic laws_. Anya didn't know if that made her want to laugh hysterically or sob like an orphan. The lull in action seemed to clear the red mist from Marcus' mind, and he dropped his forehead unceremoniously against the steering wheel. When he pulled himself back up, he sighed grimly at the shattered windshield like he was seeing it for the first time.

"Shit. Dad's going to lose his mind when he sees this."

Anya thought of putting a reassuring hand on his thigh, but right now, she felt like it would startle him more than anything. "I'm sure he'll understand, Marcus. It's...it's not like these are normal circumstances. Besides, you were doing the right thing. He'd appreciate that."

Again, the man said nothing. The traffic light was still red, its harsh light spilling hotly over the dashboard and giving Marcus' features a stark, hollowed look. Sighing, he pressed his back into the leather seat, arms straight and rigid like they were keeping the wheel at bay. His eyes, slightly wider than usual, remained locked on the intersection, but Anya could see from where she sat that he was fighting to keep his breathing steady.

"Marcus?"

He swallowed. "Yeah?"

"I'm scared out of my mind right now."

He turned his face to stare at her then, and the weary, yet incredibly honest look on it was something she was sure she'd never seen before.

"You and me both."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Apparently, attempting to succinctly document the events of E-Day makes me forget how to write properly. Chapter will be embettered as soon as I can open the document without dry-heaving. ;_;<strong>


	10. IV: Halcyon, Part Three

**IV.  
>Halcyon<strong>  
>(Part Three)<p>

_...this city's become  
>the most beautiful thing I've seen.<em>

Marcus swung one of the towering double doors shut behind him—more an art piece of glass and steel than a simple entrance—and winced at the sharp sound that echoed through the halls of the sprawling Fenix Estate. He strode up to one of the grand, sweeping staircases.

"Dad?" he called out, voice strained as if he was afraid the ancient marble floors would crack at the volume. "_Dad!_ Are you home?"

Anya realized distantly that it was probably almost sunrise by now, but a responding voice echoed down instantly from above.

"Marcus? Is that you? Oh thank _heaven_, you're home. I've been trying to contact you all night! Where in God's name have you been?"

Anya fidgeted with the hem of her pencil skirt; it was clear that Marcus hadn't told his father he would be with a certain female companion for the evening. In his typical fashion, the Gear deftly steamrolled past the inquisition.

"Dad...Damn it, can you just come down? We need to talk."

The hurried _tap-tap-tap_ of dress shoes on stone approached, and then Adam Fenix was standing atop the stairs. In spite of it being an ungodly hour of the night, the esteemed professor and former COG Major looked like he was ready to have his portrait painted.

"Marcus, have you heard the reports? I'm unsure what to even..." Adam bit his words off neatly as his arctic eyes—the very same as Marcus'—landed on Anya. "Oh. _Anya_. My dear, what are you doing here?"

The corners of Marcus' mouth twitched down in an unappreciative frown, but his back straightened and his chin raised slightly: imperceptible shifts in posture that suggested he'd cultivated a particular stance just for addressing his lofty father.

"I brought her back myself." God, even his _voice_ sounded different around Adam. "With all the quakes happening, I didn't think the apartments would be safe."

All traces of indelicate surprise fled from Adam's face, replaced by a deadly seriousness that seemed like his default expression. "Nowhere is, Marcus. The entire planet is under attack." The professor started down the stairs, shaking his head grimly. "A carefully planned assault on a purely baffling scale. Textbook execution, really. What really amazes me is the sheer numbers these Locust seem to be emerging in..."

Anya's spine gave an involuntary shiver. "Is _that_ what they're calling them? _Locust?_"

"Makes sense." Marcus seemed less perturbed; it was as if Adam's distant and scientific air was suddenly catching. He crossed his arms and leveled a calculating stare. "They're all consuming monsters, right? Chewing through everything, everyone. What I don't get is why Ephyra hasn't been hit yet."

"Neither has Jacinto, Tollen, and a few others." Adam stepped off the final stair and assumed a perfect mirror image of his son's posture. "Surely, though, you understand why."

Anya couldn't believe it: the apocalypse was evidently looming on the nearby horizon, and the wildly intelligent Fenixes were treating it like a routine chance to brush up on their geography. Marcus seemed to expect it, however. He stood for several moments, jaw working industriously back and forth, before the light of understanding flashed through his eyes.

"It's the granite substrata, isn't it?" He said with dark confidence. "They can't tunnel up through it to our cities."

Adam raised his tufted chin in an imperceptible nod, likely the only praise he ever gave. "Too right, my boy."

From her lonely place near the doors, Anya glanced from Fenix to Fenix. "Granite sub-_what?_"

"Substrata, dear," Adam explained patiently in his warmest professor tones. "The entire Jacinto Plateau rests over a solid plate of granite. I pray I'm not wrong, but so far, the Locust forces seem unable to breach the plateau."

There was a moment of dusty silence as the information took its sweet time settling over Anya's sleep-starved brain. "So we're safe, then?" she said at length. "Ephyra, Jacinto, Montevado...and all the rest?"

Father and son exchanged glances, the elder sighing softly.

"Like I said...I pray I'm not wrong."

Anya swayed. "Oh."

The relief coursing through her body was instantly replaced by a new injection of fear, and she was suddenly aware of an unfamiliar darkness at the outer rims of her vision. Before she could catch herself, her knees buckled slightly, and she felt herself stumble forward like a spindle-legged foal.

Both Marcus and his father lurched to catch her, but Marcus got to her first, snatching awkwardly at her shoulders before she could fall. Adam helped him hoist her up somewhat, his hand holding her chin like a concerned doctor.

"Breathe, dear. Just breathe." She felt his pallid eyes sternly scanning her. "Goodness, Anya, you're exhausted. How long has it been since you last slept?"

Using Marcus' chest to push herself back onto graceless feet, Anya pressed a palm over her eyes and shook her head. "A long time. I...had a bit to drink earlier, too."

From the corner of her hazy eye, the woman caught Adam flashing Marcus what might have been a look of mild dissent. However, the moment passed, and the professor gently cupped her elbow.

"But, of course, this is all too much. Perhaps you would like to rest in one of the rooms in the guest wing. Marcus, be a gentleman and show her, will you?"

"O-oh, I don't know..." Anya blinked, entirely unsure as to what the polite thing to do was. But just like back in Guilt & Co., Marcus intervened with flawless timing.

"You probably should rest," he admitted, brows making a concerned peak. "Come on, I'll take you."

"I...okay. Th-thank you, professor. You're very generous."

In all honesty, Anya had no desire to lock herself in some huge, lonely room at a time like this, let alone go to sleep, but Marcus seemed to know something. Adam, on the other hand, just seemed relieved at getting Anya to concede. As Marcus guided Anya towards a carpeted corridor to the left of the stairs, the professor sent what Anya could only imagine was a well-practiced _we'll talk later_ stare after them.

After what felt like ages later, they emerged from the labyrinth of long hallways and into a wide common area. It was lit dimly by a single bronze, twisting chandelier, and each wall held the entrance to what Anya assumed were even more regally decorated guests rooms. They halted in the middle, near a stately arrangement of old globes and potted plants, but Anya remained glued to her escort's side. The more she thought about it, the more she realized how intimidating all this empty space really was. She coughed, then grimaced at the way the sound echoed somberly over the gold plaster. Hell, it was like living in a museum.

"Uh, so..." The woman found herself making a conscious effort to keep her voice down. "Does it matter which one?"

Marcus gave a one-shoulder shrug, eyes drifting lazily around the grand room. "Well, not really, but..."

She shuffled over the dull red carpet to the nearest pair of double doors—the one on the left—as he trailed off. Prodding open one of the panels, she turned around. He was staring intently at her.

"What?"

"That one." Marcus rubbed his neck, peering at the half-open doors. "Is...mine."

Anya blinked.

"You sleep in a guest room?"

"I...well, no. I moved out from my old room a while ago."

"Oh. Bigger?"

"Quieter."

"Okay, well..." Anya tucked a platinum strand of hair behind her ear. "I'll choose one of the other rooms, then..."

Marcus gave her a slow, careful glance. "Doesn't matter," he said, pausing for the barest second. "My room is less dusty."

Again, Anya found herself groping for words. This was not the Marcus she was accustomed to. She didn't know what disturbed her more; his sudden concern for dust mites, or the fact that he seemed to be willingly offering a glimpse into something as intimately private as his own room. She fiddled with her fingers.

"You...don't mind?"

"I don't think I would offer if I did."

Somehow, the usual airy silence of the manor deepened into something even more awkward. For several seconds, they just stared at each other, standing stiffly by the wide doorway, before Marcus merely reached out and pushed the doors open fully.

"After you."

Anya was stunned upon crossing the threshold, as if the room put up the same sort of invisible anti-outsider wall that its owner did. The room was huge, probably second only to the master suite itself as far as personal quarters went, with frosted glass windows that stretched from the polished hardwood floor all the way up to the soaring ceiling. However, less than a quarter of the floor space was being used; the king-sized bed had evidently been pushed into the far corner long ago, and everything else—the armoire, towering bookcases, and Marcus' personal effects—was clustered tightly around the bed. The only other piece of furniture was a lonely chaise lounge pulled in front of the enormous, ornately carved fireplace, with several stacks of books radiating outwards from it. The only source of light came from the gradually rising sun outside, its first amber rays filtering softly through the narrow windows.

Anya balked, stepping into the room proper as Marcus ambled in behind her. "Your room is twice the size of my entire apartment."

He made a small grumbling noise in his throat, as if that wasn't something he considered worth bragging about.

"Yeah, so...Make yourself at home, I guess." He gestured vaguely around, but the blank look on his face suggested he had little to no idea what to do with a woman in his room. Arms wrapped around herself, Anya perched cautiously on the edge of the chaise lounge and stared distantly into the fireplace's nest of unlit logs. It was then that she heard the scuff of boots on the opulent area rug and twisted around; Marcus was looking awkward and edging towards the door.

"You're going?" she blurted.

The tall Gear blinked at her from across the room, as if there was no other conceivable course of action, but she refused to let him off that easy and stared expectantly right back. The message must have gotten through that otherwise impenetrable veil of non-emotion, because Marcus heaved a sheepish cough and strode back.

"Sorry, I just thought you might want to lay down for a while," he confessed quietly as he slunk around the chaise. In an abstract moment, Anya noted that he moved very quietly for a man of his stature. "You seemed a bit...light-headed."

The high-quality furniture creaked as he eased his weight onto it. Wincing, Anya sighed and rested her cheek in her palm.

"Sorry about that. First time being welcomed in your house, and I nearly pass out in your foyer."

"It's not like anyone can blame you. This is..._insane_."

"Hah, good word for it." Anya shook her head morosely. It still hadn't sunk in yet, she knew instinctively. It would take days, maybe even weeks for the reality of everything to truly hit her. If anyone was familiar with the numbing side affects of shock, it was Anya Stroud. But for now, she could take comfort in that numbness, at least for a little while. "Thanks for catching me, by the way."

Marcus just looked mildly disturbed. "I almost ripped your arms out of their sockets."

She couldn't help but chuckle, though she was sure it sounded as forced as it felt. They sat in quiet resolution, silence settling stiffly around them as they ran out of the easy words to say. Distantly, Anya wished Marcus would light the fireplace just for the comfortable crackle of flames, but if the fine coating of dust on the logs was anything to go by, he didn't spend much time here as it was.

"Hey...Marcus?"

He swallowed, as if deliberately restraining from replying too quickly.

"Yeah?"

Her answer came in the form of action; on a leap of faith, she sidled over to him, the fabric of her skirt shifting on the chaise cushion as she closed the cold, empty space between them. He watched her every movement, his gaze cautious, yet not quite surprised when she reached out and laid her hand over his, gentle as a cat's paw.

"Thank you," she murmured, lashes dropped to her cheeks. "For taking such good care of me. I..." She paused, fumbling the words. "I'm not sure how well I would have handled this without you."

A long moment passed; she half-expected him to recoil out of sheer instinct, but he never budged. Instead, she felt his eyes slide like blue searchlights over her, and then his fingers suddenly curled around hers in a soft, almost reverent sort of way.

"Don't worry about it," came his usual mumble, dismissive and vague as ever, but it was enough for her. They remained motionless for a long moment, rediscovering their comfortable quietness and sharing in that old relief that, for that exact moment, they didn't have to be alone.

Suddenly, he flinched and pulled back.

"Oh, shit," he whispered, looking hard at Anya without really seeing her. "_Dom_."

Marcus looked suddenly miserable with guilt, and he melted away from her. Cold air rushed unwelcome into the space between them.

"Marcus?" she ventured, furrowing her brow and grasping back for his hand. "What do you mean?"

"I never called him. He'd better be okay. _Shit_." Shoving his hand into his pants pocket, he retrieved his cell, punched the numbers—entirely from memory, Anya noted—and tilted his head into the phone. Seconds dragged by, and the Gear's face fell further with every unanswered ringing tone.

He hung up, redialled, and waited for a second time. The same scene replayed twice more, Marcus getting more and more agitated with every unanswered call, before Anya tugged gently on his wrist.

"I'm sure he's fine, Marcus," she tried. "The sun's barely even risen, everyone's probably still asleep."

"But then they don't know about what's happened. I have to talk to him."

The fact that he couldn't herd all his friends into a single safe place where he could keep a close eye on them seemed to absolutely torture the man.

"They'll be recalling all the Gears soon, if they haven't already," Anya said, hoping he'd see the sense in her words. "We can meet up with him then, right?"

Some small measure of tension flowed out of Marcus' shoulders, as if he was calmed by the prospect of being able to fight this nightmare back—on his own terms. However, the weight returned almost immediately, and he gave his head an impatient shake.

"I'm trying again."

He hammered out Dom's number again, then held the phone to his ear, glaring absently into the fireplace. Anya gave his free hand a tiny squeeze. It was quiet enough for her to just make out the tense ringing tone; it repeated for nearly a minute before there was a click, and Marcus perked up.

"Dom, it's me. Where the hell are you? Have you seen the..."

He trailed off, frowning. "Hold it, Dom. Slow down, I can't understand a single thing you're..."

Slowly, Marcus raised his head. His hand went suddenly limp in her bracing grasp.

"Dom...you're not making any sense. _Who's_ gone?"

The bottom of Anya's stomach fell out. Silence fell like a pall over the huge room; even the air itself seemed to grind to a halt. It felt like hours before Marcus finally broke the deafening quiet, but when he did, his voice was barely a scraping whisper.

"Oh, God, Dom. _No_."

He tore away from the chaise, his hand sliding numbly from Anya's. She watched him, her brain ripping through the list of possible tragedies; was it a relative of Dom's? One of their Gear buddies? Maybe it was just some famous politician, like Chairman Dalyell...

She jumped as the sound of a slamming drawer cracked through the air. Marcus was rooting through his armoire, his movements harsh and jerky as he searched for something. "Please...Dom, listen, you gotta calm down. I'm going to drive over, okay?" He drew a polished Snub pistol from the bottom drawer, checking the safety before wedging it snugly under his belt. Sick with fear and confusion, Anya rose from the chaise lounge to return to her companion's side. She touched his shoulder, but he didn't even seem to feel it.

"Dom..._Dom_. Please..." Marcus' voice was suddenly hoarse; there was a ragged edge to his words, an unfamiliar strain that iced Anya's veins. It was panic. "God, just...just _wait_ for me. Please. I'll be there as soon as I can, I..."

No, this was not the death of a mere Chairman, Anya realized with a horrified jump of her heart. This was much, much worse. However, Marcus appeared to recognize his own gradual loss of control; he sucked down a tense breath and rubbed his eyes as he leaned into the phone a final time.

"Just...don't do anything stupid. _Please_. I'm coming."

The cell lingered at his ear, like he was afraid to put it down, but the single continuous tone of a disconnected line bored through the silence, and he flipped it closed at last. Torn between the need to comprehend the situation and her overwhelming desire to comfort her distraught friend, Anya squeezed Marcus' arm in an attempt to bring his gaze down. Even though he was still staring straight ahead, she could see his eyes were as cold as she felt.

"Marcus, what's happening?" she whispered, like loud noises might shatter him in this rare and vulnerable state. "Is Dom okay?"

He said nothing; it was like breaching the barrier between the living and the dead. She felt the pressure of her heightening dread on her spine and in her stomach, and stepped in closer, allowing a hand to stray to his face.

"Marcus, _talk to me_."

He flinched like her touch had scalded him, and turned a blank stare on her.

"It's Sylvia and Benny. They're..." Every syllable caught like a fishhook in his throat. "They're dead."

Anya felt her hand raise to her mouth of its own accord, fingers curling against her numb lips as the truth seeped over her. Sylvia and Benedicto, Dom's two tiny children, were dead; nothing could have possibly been worse.

Her heart broke for Dom and Marcus both. In the two years since she'd first met them, she'd come to understand the bone-deep bond between Marcus and the Santiagos; they were undeniably family. _Brothers_. And that meant that, reserved as he was, Marcus was almost an uncle to Dom's kids, just as much as Carlos had been in life.

"God, Marcus, I...I'm so sorry..."

She was still close enough to reach out and grasp his hand with both of hers. The empty, almost bewildered haze evaporated from Marcus' visage, replaced instead by that hard, stony expression he wore on the field of battle. Anya knew that look, and it made her miserable; she could feel her familiar, human Marcus slipping away, fading completely as he flipped to war machine mode.

For the second time that night, he pulled his hand out of Anya's.

"I have to go," he said evenly, and pushed past her to the door.

"M-Marcus, wait..." She remained glued to his side, trotting clumsily along as he strode out into the hall. "Maybe I should come, what if—"

She was no match for his size or strength; his determination made him steam-powered, and he continued to brush her off like she wasn't even there. "No, I'll go alone," he growled. "Stay here, and wait for the recall. I'll meet you at the CIC if I can."

"No, I don't want you to go alone. I should come with you, I should—"

With shocking agility, he spun on her and took her firmly by the shoulders.

"Dom just lost his kids, Anya. He's losing his mind, and Maria's looking for a gun to put to her head." His acid eyes raked her face. "I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do, but I know he needs me. His _brother._"

Anya stared up wide-eyed at the stranger gripping her, but as much as it hurt, she finally understood. They were brothers, and this was Marcus' sworn duty, and she was only in the way. Of course.

"Marcus," she whispered, standing stock-still under his bruising hold. "You're hurting me."

He stared at her, then the red mist cleared from his vision, and he quickly withdrew his offending hands. Releasing a truly exhausted sigh, the man rubbed his jaw, suddenly looking years older.

"Just stay here. Where I know you're _safe_."

She gave him a reluctant nod, reaching up to her shoulders to touch the manhandled muscles. Realizing there was nothing she could offer him, the woman scrapped up what she hoped was a reassuring smile and stepped away. "It's okay. You're right; Dom needs you," she said. "Go."

If Marcus was relieved by her surrender, he gave no indication, just set his jaw and nodded back. "You'll be recalled soon. Keep a radio on. Dad can call a taxi for you if you need—"

Anya waved him off. "I'll be fine. _Go_." She opened her mouth, on the verge of saying more, but the increasingly impatient look on Marcus' face made her shut it again. Their eyes remained linked by a thread for a moment longer.

"Okay...I'll see you when I see you," he said finally, then turned and made off down the corridor. Anya watched, silent and alone, as her Gear jogged away into the shadowy halls, then turned a corner and disappeared completely. She bit her lip and closed her eyes.

"See you when I see you."

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


	11. V: All Sparks

**V.  
>All Sparks<strong>

_my lesson I had to learn;  
>your fortress you had to burn.<em>

The insignia was simple; little more than a pair of silver stripes stitched under the symbolistic COG gear on Victor Hoffman's sleeve. If you weren't looking for it, if you didn't know it was any different from the one the Gear wore that morning, it would hardly even catch your eye. But for a couple inconspicuous strips of starched fabric, that insignia carried a frigging boatload of heavy concepts.

Some—loyalty, heightened responsibility, and the like—were no different than with his previous promotions; they felt familiar, safe. But others were far less so: stringency, leadership, and the ability to command, control and direct Gears on an immense scale. It was official as of yesterday morning: they had ushered him into delayed officer's training, and he would come out a lieutenant. Major Hollend had assured him he'd still be battling front line, but something about his newfound ability to order Gears to their deaths unsettled him in ways he hadn't anticipated.

And then, of course, there was always the package of touchy-feely bullshit attached to those little stripes. Pride, joy, relief, self-fullfilment; refreshing surges of emotion that always seemed to accompany a new promotion. But Hoffman didn't feel any of that. Now, as he shuffled along the delicate cobbled path in Ephyra's luscious Cramoisy Gardens, all he could think of was the truth he had to reveal, and the utter waste it would lay to this beautiful summer day.

"My god, Victor. Can you go anywhere without being half an hour early?"

The voice was so close and clear, Hoffman jumped and whirled around. There, beaming with pride in her own stealth abilities, was a single woman, all ruddy skin and sky-coloured eyes. And all Hoffman's miserable head could think of was Major Ross Hollend's final words to him.

_"You're going to be an officer, Hoffman. No fraternization with the ranks. It's time to stop seeing that Islander woman." _

Hoffman sighed. "Dammit, girl. You just about gave me a heart attack."

Smile never fading, Bernadette Mataki gazed around at the surrounding gardens and pretended not to notice him. "You're twenty four, Vic. Twenty-four year-olds don't have heart attacks."

Hoffman's mouth worked for a reply, but she had science on her side, so he just settled for snorting and glancing pointedly down at his beat-up watch.

"Maybe I _am_ early. But so are you."

Bernie answered with a quick roll of her shoulders. "It's just such a bloody perfect day out," she said, gesturing out to the flat grassy lawns like she was showcasing a new sports car. "Figured it'd be a shame not to leave the sniping range early and breathe in something other than gunpowder for a change."

She was looking extra sweet today; something about the way her chocolate-dark braids gleamed in the full sun. Had he kissed her yet? He couldn't remember; usually she would have jumped him by now, but maybe—

_Damn_. It was clear that this decision was simply destined to give him hell from the get-go.

"Vic, sit down. At least try to act like you're relaxed."

With a start, Hoffman realized that Bernie had somehow traveled over to a nearby bench and was now giving him that knowing stare. She gave the carved granite seat next to her an inviting pat.

"Right. Sorry Bern." He was instantly guilty for letting himself drift out of the moment, when he knew he should be damn well savouring it. He had to remain present; he owed her that much. Bernie's smile warmed as he parked himself beside her.

"So...an afternoon in the Cramoisy Gardens, eh? What a brilliant idea," she meandered, brow cocked slyly. "Don't tell me you came up with it by yourself."

"Hey, just because a man kills things for a living doesn't mean he can't enjoy the simple things."

It was the worst; he could feel the news of his promotion to officer like a rock in his gut, but every time Bernie opened her mouth, he found himself leaving it all behind. That was bad; it was too easy to forget that he still had a bomb to drop. That things couldn't stay like _this_.

"I see." Bernie watched him with those exotic eyes, ash-coloured lips pressed in a deadly serious line. "So that's why you were always trying to drag me to all those museums and theatre productions. Well, I'm glad you decided to do change it up. Especially on a day like today." She inhaled deeply and threw her arms over the back of the bench. "The flowers are lovely this time of year, hm?"

Hoffman couldn't help but shoot his companion a teasing smile. "_Lovely?_ I thought you'd be rootin' around for your next survival class specimens."

Most women would have snapped at such brazenness, but Bernie wasn't most women. She merely grasped her chin and narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at the extravagant gardens sprawling around them.

"Hm, not anything here, I don't think," the Islander said after a careful scan of the nearest flowerbeds. "Most of these pretty things aren't something I'd be willing to eat. A few bloody good poisons out there, though."

Hoffman leaned back in the bench, unsure as to whether his companion was joking or not. "What, you tellin' me those roses I've been getting you are silent killers?"

"Oh Vic, you've never gotten me roses," Bernie smirked absently. "But see that one over there? That's Water Hemlock; highly lethal, one bite and you'd be in the hospital within the hour."

Hoffman furrowed his brow, unable to see where she was pointing.

"Uh...Bernie?"

"And that bush by the fountain? With the drooping blue petals? That's Tyran Tears. I won't tell you what it does when ingested, but let's just say you'd have to cancel your appointments for the whole week..."

"_Bernie_."

He couldn't keep the ice from his tone anymore, and it needled right into Bernie's sunny mood. She physically turned on the bench to face him in full. "Yes? What?"

"I..." _Shit, don't stumble now, you damn coward._ "Can we talk?"

For a second, she tilted her head at him, as if she couldn't decide whether to be confused or concerned. Her bright eyes searched his face, studying him. It was always what the sniper was best at: analysing the situation, gauging the distance.

"Shit, sweetheart, you're genuinely spooked," she snorted, then softened her voice to an _okay-I-can-be-serious-too_ sort of tone. "What's up?"

God, why couldn't she be like Nina Kladry, or any of the other high-octane women he'd had to run from? They had all been volatile, angry. They'd yelled or thrown fits, thrown _jewelry_, or just gone deathly quiet and slammed a door in his face. But all of that was easy to deal with; a walk in the park compared to the endless patience this woman seemed to preserve for him.

"Okay...I..." He didn't know why he continued to fumble like this; he knew exactly what he was going to say—had memorized the words, and even practiced them on the drive over. It had all seemed so quick and painless. In theory. The Gear swept off his cap and scratched his thinning black hair. "Things aren't like they used to be. I'm...getting older."

"I hear that's how time works," Bernie stated dryly, one brow quirking high. "But like I said, twenty-four isn't exactly a dying age."

It would have been a pretty logical statement; if only they weren't at war. Truth was, out here, _dying age_ could easily be synonymous with enlisting age. But Hoffman knew that tossing that counterpoint would be nothing more than a feeble attempt at distraction; one that razor-sharp Bernie would sidestep easily.

"No, Bern. Things are changing...Things _have_ changed."

Her eyes were beginning to narrow, confirming Hoffman's fears and cramping his guts. There really _was_ no sneaking secrets past a survival artist.

"Alright, cut the bullshit, Vic. You're starting to spook _me_ now."

Hoffman sneaked a glance at the sniper sitting at his side, and recognized the lines of tension in her chiseled features. Maybe she _would_ blow up. God only knew how much she hated not getting her way. He'd seen her lose it on a few guys before; unlucky bastards who had mistakenly believed that their high ranks made them immune to a grunt like Mataki. But never on her Gear buddies, Hoffman knew, never on the ones who counted on her the most.

With a miserable lurch of his stomach, Hoffman realized that he probably fit into that category.

"I got a promotion, Bern."

The Islander crinkled her nose at him, then, horribly, just laughed. The safe, familiar sound only dragged Hoffman further down into his mires. "Oh, come off it. You're a bloody sergeant major; that's as high a pay grade as pukes like us get to enjoy."

Hoffman took a deep breath, then tried again. "I got a _commission_. An officer's commission."

Another bark of laughter escaped Bernie's throat, but it was much shorter, approaching dismay. "Vic, I said _come off it_," she reiterated, brow furrowing. "You've missed officer's training by...what? Six years?"

The unclouded sun was suddenly seeming to beat down a little too hotly, and direct eye contact was becoming increasingly unattainable. No, this was going to be nowhere as simple as it had seemed in the rearview mirror of his truck. "I know. That's why they've entered me in _late_ officer's training. Major Hollend's specific request."

"Late officer's...?" Bernie repeated dumbly, then snorted like it was the stupidest notion she'd ever had the misfortune to hear about. "You're...being serious."

He winced and looked for something else—anything else—to focus on. Anything but those falling blue eyes. "I wish I wasn't."

"But you _are_," Bernie pressed, though her tone still hadn't reached wrathful Islander volumes. "They're actually shoving you into being an officer. _Aren't they?_"

No, Hoffman realized with a pang, she just sounded hurt.

"Yes," his lips formed the word of their own accord. The breeze picked up around them, ushering the scent of blossoms and freshly cut grass into the silence between them. Hoffman didn't want to look at Bernie's face, but he could feel her scan him over before she merely slumped back against the bench.

They didn't say it, but the same words, stark and unfeelingly official, raced through their heads like ticker tape. Fraternization: the explicit forbiddance of overly familiar relationships between officers and enlisted soldiers, especially ones of a romantic nature. In the stern eyes of their COG superiors, their feelings would make them weak, and their battlefield judgement unsound.

In spite of all the glorious fresh air and summery warmth, Hoffman's spine went a little cold with the truth: whatever spark had existed between them before, it died today.

"You're not one of them, Victor. You're not top brass," Bernie whispered suddenly, and this time, there was no mistaking the sorrow in her voice. "You just _aren't_."

"I'm sorry, Bernie," he mumbled. What more could he say? _We knew this would happen eventually_? Or _hey, it was fun while it lasted_? It was a pathetic follow-up, but if Bernie was expecting something more eloquent than that, then maybe she didn't know him all as well as he thought. The Islander was staring hard out at the emerald lawns now, features frozen and shoulders sagging; Hoffman wondered if she'd even heard him.

"You can go."

The words sounded so cold and unfamiliar, Hoffman had to take a moment to even realize that it was Bernie who'd spoken them.

"...What?"

"You heard me. You said what you had to say, so _you can_ _go_." She sniffed and gestured wide to the surrounding fields of Cramoisy Gardens. "I want to stay here and enjoy the rest of my afternoon. But you can leave. Thanks."

Hoffman had to turn away to hide his grimace. This was her right: she was allowed to ice over now. In fact, it almost felt better now that she finally had. Hoffman wasn't the bad guy, but he'd bear the role if he had to. For her sake.

"Okay. I'm leaving," he replied as gently as his tightening throat would allow. "...You take care of yourself, Bernie. You hear?"

There was no reply but the soft ripple of wind through the trees, and his own voice of reason pleading for him to take the Islander's advice and just _leave_. _Get out of her sight_. As his boots began to carry him away, he cursed himself for picking such a stupid place for this. The cobbled path to his car was long, and he was sure that he looked as much a shameful wounded animal as he felt.

He tried to distract himself: concentrate on the bright floral scents or the hard sunshine, but all he could seem to think of was that damn last kiss he'd managed to forget.

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


	12. VI: Into Dust, Part One

**VI.  
>Into Dust<strong>  
>(Part One)<p>

_no light, no light  
>in your bright blue eyes;<br>I never knew daylight could be so violent_.

Eyes closed, Santiago pressed his back plate into the towering bookshelf and forced himself to _slow down_.

His mind shrieked about the bullets streaking through the air by his ears, but he reminded it that he was firmly in cover. Safe as safe could be. He had snagged a rare handful of seconds; time enough to reload. Moving of their own accord, his hands worked through the padding of his gloves and brought a fresh clip up into his Lancer. The weight of its scratched, yet solid carbon casing felt good in his arms. His finger found the trigger again, and that felt good too.

_Locked and loaded. Go_.

Dom swung out of cover; squeezed. The Lancer kicked violently into his breast plate as he fired at the desk where he had seen a drone sight up. Under the scream of bullets and metal on metal, Dom's brain distantly registered the wounded cry that pealed through the hall of the East Barricade library. Death, slick and familiar: scratch one grub.

Something rose up behind a heap of toppled book carts, and the Gear whirled back into cover behind one of the nearby pillars. He felt the shells pummel the stone at his back, but the sound of gunbursts had long ago gone foggy.

_Go._

Dom flipped from pillar to pillar, slamming into the cracked marble face just as a second barrage of bullets tore up the elaborate paneled wall behind him. He counted two and a half beats—the exact time it took for a near-empty Hammerburst clip to bottom out—then inhaled.

_Go._

On the exhale, before fluid thoughts of self-preservation could form, the corporal tumbled out of cover and into the library's unprotected middle stretch. His adrenaline-spiked brain identified the nearest source of cover to be an overturned table. It seemed impossibly far away right up until Dom's shoulder bashed into its thick granite top, leaving a sharp ache in the bone as he huddled down below the next storm of rounds.

"_Groundwalker...kill._"

The tumult of gunfire was so loud, it took several seconds for Dom to realize his tac-com was crackling impatiently in his ear.

"_Corporal Santiago, this is Control_," said a familiar voice: feminine, but unfailingly steady. "_You pinned in the library?_"

He pressed a finger to his ear piece, feeling deaf. "Kinda, yeah. But it's my own fault for getting trapped behind everyone else. I can hold out."

Trying to keep his breathing down to normal levels, Dom knelt up to unload another clip at the general location of his crouching foes. But this time, there was no guttural scream to show for his efforts; worse yet, there was more returning fire than he'd expected. He wondered if he _could_ hold out.

Just as he squatted back under cover, the corporal's tac-com blipped as someone else linked in.

"Control, this is Sergeant Fenix. I'm en-route to Santiago's position now."

There was a pause on the line, likely a silent sigh of exasperation. "_That's a negative, Fenix. The Hammer's coming online any minute now. We need you and the targeting laser to stay close_."

"The lieutenant's right, sarge." Dom felt like he had to yell to be heard, though he knew he was probably just screaming in their ears. "You chill out with the laser; I'm dealing."

There was no reply, but Dom was sure he could hear heavy breathing on the circuit's other end.

"Marcus, I said _I'm fine_. Don't come charging down here just because—"

"Shut up, Dom. And keep your friggin' head down; I'm coming."

With that, the sergeant's tac-com clipped out again, leaving Dom to curse at his friend's predictable bullheadedness.

"_Die, human..._"

The corporal ducked down with his head between his knees, hunching as his back was pelted with splinters and chunks of granite. Now that his initial adrenaline boost was starting to fizzle, the severity of the situation began to sink in.

_Okay, so _now_ I'm pinned. Maybe I do need some assistance._

Suddenly, Dom felt vibrations, strong enough to feel through the soles of his massive boots. For a few mortifying moments, he thought he might be dealing with a direct E-hole, but when the empty shells at his feet began to jump in slow rhythm, he realized it was far worse than that.

_Yeah, definitely need some assistance._

"_Grind_."

There was an echoing lull in the fight—quiet enough for Dom to catch the clamour of the real battle in the courtyard outside—and then the shriek of Mulcher fire drowned out all possible thought. The Gear threw himself down on the stone floor, hands clasped desperately over his head as the entire library was torn apart. All around him, pages of destroyed books fluttered through the air like ash; he was unable to move, and unsure how long his meager table would keep him alive.

Just as things were starting to look their bleakest, something black and smoking sailed over the rim of his vision, and then the Mulcher's wail was cut short by a compact explosion, sending shrapnel and charred books flying in all directions. The Grinder never picked back up, but its grub comrades were quick to add their Hammerbursts to the fray. This time, Dom couldn't help notice the bullets were aiming for something other than him.

"How you like _that_ in your face, bitch!"

There was no mistaking that vicious growl. _Unbelievable_. Dom smiled down into the dirt-smeared marble, then flattened again as another Boomshot shell soared over his head. Like before, the enemy gunbursts were swallowed by the shell's rapid explosions, followed closely by the final cries of fragmenting Locust soldiers. Hurrying to sit up with his Lancer properly, Dom seized the violent distraction to pop up and assess the damage.

The library was unrecognizable; where there had been grand bookshelves and pillars, there was nothing but smoking wood and shattered stone, shreds of ruined textbooks settling in the debris. Distantly, he thought about Adam Fenix, and wondered how much it would wound the old professor to see literature destroyed so flippantly.

"Thanks for the assist, Marcus," Dom called to the mess of toppled bookshelves near the back wall. "Things were getting hairy in here."

Before he heard a reply, the Gear caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye.

"Dom, your six!"

The corporal spun, fumbling to bring his rifle to bear, but the last Locust was closer than he thought. Time crawled as Dom watched the grub level its own Hammerburst, moving faster than he could, just as a quarter-ton of armour and muscle vaulted over a fallen desk and kicked the remaining grub in the face.

Dom was horrified: Marcus had just hurled himself boot first into close combat, and Dom couldn't cover him and what if—

The blast of a revved-up chainsaw split the air in two. Dom didn't hear the screams, but he saw the thrashing pale arms and fan of gushing blood. It was over in an instant; what was left of the mutilated drone splattered to the floor, leaving one Sergeant Fenix standing alone, rifle held high and chest heaving.

He pulled his finger from the Lancer's power switch, leaving a harsh silence to blanket the gutted library, then curled his lip at his foe's grisly remains. "And stay down."

Marcus turned to face Dom then. The sergeant wiped a smear of dark Locust blood from his cheek, then hefted his now-empty Boomshot. "I told you to keep your head down. You okay?"

Dom snorted. "Goddammit, man, where the hell did you find—"

"_Are you?_" Marcus pressed, brow furrowing with concern.

"I...yeah. Yeah." In all honesty, he was still giddy from the battlerush; if he did have a bullet or two somewhere in his gut, he probably wouldn't have felt it anyways.

"Okay, good." With a loud crash, Marcus threw the spent Boomshot to the floor and pressed his tac-com. "Fenix to Control: Santiago's good to go. Let the boys know we're coming in from their flank for the assist."

"_Wilco, Fenix,_" Control relayed. "_They'll be happy to see you; things are getting rough out there._"

Marcus shot Dom a _hear that shit?_ look, and the pair wasted no time in making for the library's near-collapsed exit. Dom was panting just as hard as Marcus had after sawing the drone, but unlike the older Gear, he hadn't quite gotten it under control yet. As they emerged into the chaos that was the academy courtyard, he did his best to steady his heart rate, then followed his sergeant into the madness.

The frenzy of the fight put nearly every soldier's personality in reverse; in Marcus' case, his pulled a full one-eighty. Off the field, he conducted his day to day existence like a surgeon made incisions: meticulous, guarded, and never giving a word or gesture more than he had to. But out here, in the fray of ricocheting rounds and flying dirt clods and thundering fire, Marcus became instantly and flawlessly enmeshed, allowing his adrenaline and pure battle rage alone to guide him through the chaos.

Many considered it a gift—it might have even been what propelled him into his current war hero status—but sometimes, all Dom saw were severely dangerous coping mechanisms, and a man who felt more welcome on the battlefield than in his own home.

Side by side and heads down, Marcus and Dom raced out into the courtyard, the cobbled stone behind them exploding with Hammerburst rounds as they went. They slid deftly in behind a cracked roadblock, and joined the dozen other Gears in the fight against the oncoming wave of Locust, easily twenty strong.

Across the street, an unrecognizable Gear roadie-ran along a low fence, then hurled himself haphazardly behind the rubble of a collapsed statue. The armour plates on his left arm were more red than blue.

"Sir!" the private called, cowering lower with each round that flew past his head. "There's too many of them, sir!"

Marcus issued a bull-like snort and braced up against the roadblock, shoulders hunched like he was trying to break down an iron door. "This squad holds this line until I say so!" The sergeant emphasized his point by leaping up and riddling the Locusts' cover with Lancer bullets.

Dom crouched up with his rifle in hand, ready to add his own bullets to the action, when his tac-com suddenly fritzed loudly in his ear. For several seconds, it sputtered nothing but static, but then the line cleared up into recognizable words.

"_Mayday, mayday, mayday..._"

In spite of his years of experience, the corporal's heart always leapt into his throat at every SOS. The voice was older, husky, and almost familiar. Dom cocked his head into his earpiece in an attempt to make out the static-choked words. What he heard froze his breath in his lungs.

"_This is Professor Adam Fenix. The Fenix Estate is under heavy assault. Any nearby callsigns, intercept. Repeat: any and all callsigns in the East Barricade area, please respond immediately._ _This is a matter of_ life and death_._"

Just as soon as the relay began, it clicked out. Dom swore under his breath, then cowered back under cover as a frag detonated a little too close for comfort. If there was a time for family to be in immediate danger, this sure as hell wasn't it.

"Marcus!" Dom yelled, but the squad leader had surged up for another assault, and the roar of the battle was too much. Dom sidled over and yanked bodily on Marcus' thigh straps. "_Marcus!_"

Marcus squeezed off the last of his clip, then fell back beneath the blaze of returning fire. He shot a moment's glance at Dom, face set like concrete.

"_What?_"

Dom swallowed. "We just got a distress call."

Marcus' icy eyes were locked on the battlefield again, one hand groping instinctively for a fresh clip on his waist. "Distress call? Tell 'em we got our own shit to deal with."

"Marcus..." Dom realized the fury of the fight must have made the sergeant deaf to his tac-com. _Damn it_. "It's your old man."

From where he stood, Dom could see his friend's whole body seize up, his large hands frozen mid-reload.

"...Shit," he breathed into the concrete barrier, a sound barely audible over the wail of gunfire, then slammed the clip home and gave a willful snarl. "Tell 'im I'm coming."

The sergeant's unhesitating response shouldn't have been surprising. Still, Dom bit his lip and leaned in. "What about the Hammer strike?" He gestured to his companion's shoulder, where the targeting laser was casually slung. Such a small, innocuous piece of metal and carbon for the catastrophic destruction it commanded.

For once, something seemed to tug at the edges of Marcus' determination. He sneaked a look over the roadblock, then at his fellow Gears all around him, giving their all to beat the grubs back. His jaw worked industriously back and forth, and his blue eyes darted aimlessly; Dom had never seen the man so torn.

Of course, it was Marcus' ultimate schism: when it came to the only two families he had, did his loyalties belong to his father, his last living flesh and blood, or the brothers he'd fought alongside his whole life?

Inaction settled over Marcus like a pall, then he jammed a finger to his ear. "Control, this is Sergeant Fenix: you read me?"

The line fuzzed for several seconds, then crackled to life. "_Loud and clear, Fenix. Status?_"

"Not good." The squad leader had to yell over the gunshots. "These grub bastards got brave. My Gears need some back up. Now."

"_Understood, Fenix. I'm diverting every soldier I can spare. Hold in there._"

"Thanks, Lieutenant...And how're those sats comin'?" Marcus bent his head. "You got an ETA for me?"

"_If I did, you'd be the first to know. You've got cloud cover for miles; it might be some time before the Hammer can line up. Just stay close, and we'll buzz you the moment we can catch a signal_."

At this, Marcus and Dom exchanged looks. "Define _close_."

There was a long pause, then the volume on Control's side spiked, as if the speaker had pulled the mic right up to their lips.

"_Marcus, what's going on?_"

It was subtle: a quick slip into familiarity between two people who went way back, but Marcus' eyes said it all. Lieutenant Anya Stroud was getting scared for him, and he was doing his best not to give a damn.

_Good luck with that, man._

For a second, the sergeant looked like he wanted to reply, maybe even reassure, but then he simply reached up and flicked off his tac-com.

Dom balked; he didn't want to question, but Marcus still caught his expression from the corner of his blue eye and grunted.

"Better to leave her in the dark," he stated gruffly. "Keeps her hands clean."

Dom scanned his friend's face, watching how the pre-mature lines deepened for the barest second before steeling over again, and he felt that same old pity rise up in his chest. From the very first day they met, back on the Olafson Elementary playground, Marcus was always worrying about everyone but himself. Like a spider with too thin a web, he spent his life rushing from anchor to anchor, person to person; trying desperately to keep them all tethered, but unable to understand how to truly keep them close. Anya was one of the precious few, Dom was sure.

Apparently, Adam was another.

"So then that's it," Dom ventured. "You're going."

Marcus looked exhausted. "We don't know when the Hammer'll come online," the sergeant murmured, more to himself than anything. "I..."

He stopped, teeth gritted. Dom could hear him mentally battling back his well-trained soldier's instinct. "Damn it, Dom. I have to help Dad."

Dom didn't have to ask twice. He gave a nod of understanding, the kind only a life-long friend could give, and pressed his tac-com.

"Adam Fenix, this is Corporal Santiago responding to your distress call. We're coming ASAP, so hold on."

"No. There's no _we're_," Marcus growled, flipping suddenly back to his cold sergeant tones as he scanned the courtyard for a good escape route. "The squad needs a corporal; you're staying front line, got it?"

"Like hell I am," Dom shot back, then flinched down as a round pinged off the barrier near his head. "You won't make it past Olafson on your own!"

Marcus twisted around to face his squadmate in full, voice lowered another notch and eyes like chips of razorhail. On the other side of the street, gunshots echoed and Gears cried out. "You know this is dereliction of duty, right? They could court martial us for this."

"No, they could court martial _you_ for this." The corporal gestured to Marcus' shoulder. "You're the important one with an official post and the Hammer of friggin' Dawn, not me. So let's go."

With that, Dom tucked his Lancer and rolled to a nearby bench in an effort to show Marcus just how serious he was being. His fellow Gear just bellowed after him.

"Dom!"

"You're wasting time!" the corporal yelled over his shoulder as he slunk along under cover. "We're both going, and that's it. Deal with it!"

Refusing to stop or turn back, Dom kept a hard stare and darted over to the nearest car, counting mentally. He got to six before he heard the familiar _chonk chonk chonk_ of approaching armoured boots running up to join him.

"We could get in a lotta trouble for doing this," Marcus muttered as they finally escaped the roar of the fight and jogged up the street: one last scare to ward Dom off.

But Dom could see through the seemingly emotionless facade; as they broke into the fastest run they could manage under the weight of their armour, he glanced sidelong and gave a knowing grimace.

"Don't worry, Marcus." the corporal said, answering the question his friend wasn't asking aloud. "He'll be okay. We'll make sure of it."


	13. VI: Into Dust, Part Two

**VI.  
>Into Dust<strong>  
>(Part Two)<p>

_and I'd do anything to make you stay.  
>no light, no light,<br>tell me what you want me to say._

"The research!" The professor pleaded with the faceless Gear helmet before him, its blank blue eyes utterly devoid of human empathy. "We have to save the _research_. Everything else can go to hell! Do you understand that?"

It was clear from the desperate body language of the helmet's owner that he did nothing of the sort. The tiny handful of COG soldiers—the closest in the area able to respond—were treating him like he was insane, but Adam Fenix didn't care. Like he'd so deeply intoned in his SOS, none of it mattered anymore. The research was everything; a matter of life and death.

"It's a highly defensible location," Adam urged, grasping for better bargaining chips. "We can hold it. We'll fight in the damned foyer if we have to!"

The other, much younger Gear let an anxious glance slip down to the courtyard that sprawled down over the hill in front of the Fenix Estate; its staggered stone staircases had become the impromptu battlefield where his men now fought. "With all due respect, professor," he said for perhaps the sixth time. "It might be defensible...with twice as many Gears as I have now. My boys can only give you time to get _out_."

The chevrons on the soldier's arm plate—scratched stripes of fading blue paint—identified him as a corporal. Rank didn't count for much these days, but it did suggest that he was probably a bit green; still falling back on his drills from Basic rather than hard experience on the field of war. It was becoming clear that this man and his fellow soldiers wouldn't understand the gravity of the unfolding situation. But they were willing to fight; with yet another line of roaring grubs inching up the estate's opulent front porch, that was all Adam could truly ask for.

"Please...if only you knew how _important_—"

There was a pause, and then the corporal twitched. "Sergeant Fenix?"

In spite of the flying bullets and clamour of the battle below, Adam halted, mouth parted with confusion. _Sergeant?_ He hadn't been referred to by rank in at least twelve years, and even if he had, it was _Major_ Fenix. Then, after a split second's bewilderment, Adam realized that the corporal was glancing slightly over his shoulder. Before he could put the pieces together, the other Gear gave an uncharacteristic whoop and waved his arm high.

"Sarge! Man, are we glad to see you!"

Adam whirled blindly around, oiled shoes slipping on the debris, just in time to witness the familiar, bulky forms of two Gears emerge onto the destroyed Fenix lawns. Time itself seemed to hiccough as two pairs of eyes, identical shades of glacial blue, locked onto each other.

"Marcus!" Adam practically choked, approaching his son. He could feel the pit of his stomach falling out, but somehow, he knew he shouldn't have been surprised. Dom was at his son's side, too; something else Adam wasn't shocked by. "What in God's name are you doing here? You're going to get yourselves killed!" Adam shot a pleading look to Dom. "Both of you!"

"C'mon, Dad," Marcus growled. It was clear he was doing his best not to yell at his own father. "I've come to get you out of here."

_Me?_ Adam nearly scoffed at such a trifling issue as his own safety. No, this late in the game, only one thing mattered anymore. The professor shook his head. "I've got to save my research. Do you understand how important it is?"

For a second, Marcus' emotionless battle mask slipped, revealing the faint pall that the dreaded R-word had left over his features. Of course, he knew the importance of his father's research. Like a child living in the permanent shadow of the overachieving older sibling, he'd been raised around it his whole life.

Adam opened his mouth to explain further, but Marcus just narrowed his eyes, gave a curt grunt of understanding, then jogged off to join his fellow Gears against the Locust. Dom followed silently, the sergeant's loyal shadow, slipping Adam an acknowledging nod as he passed.

"Keep your head down, sir."

No sooner had the boys rounded the ornate fountain atop the cascading courtyard, the course war cries of oncoming drones carried on the wind, and the guns kicked back up into their brain-numbing storm. Undaunted, Marcus skirted around a towering cypress tree and into the shelter of one of the hip-high brick walls. If fighting in the tattered gardens of his youth bothered the man, he never let it show.

"Okay, everyone find some cover!" he boomed. "Spread out along the wall."

Adam wasn't sure why he was paused by the notion, but he'd never seen his son in action before. Marcus was a good sergeant, he thought plainly.

Suddenly, the other, nameless corporal was in Adam's peripherals, hurrying back again from the frontline. His voice was muffled by his helmet's filter, but there was no mistaking the edge of exasperation as he spoke. "Professor, can't we just...I don't know, grab up all your research and take it with us?"

"No, no, it's not some...some _hard drive_ you can just download." Adam hissed incredulously. In fact, the more the professor thought about the terabytes upon terabytes of data he'd meticulously amassed—more than a decade's worth—the more baffled he became, even at his own work. "There's far too much. The house must be defended!"

The Gear leaned forward, gun dropped to his side like he was about to make a final attempt at getting Old Man Fenix to come to his senses, when he froze completely. His helmet was facing straight down to the stones at his feet.

Adam had civilian shoes; made of softer material than chunky Gear boots, with much thinner soles. He felt it instantly.

Marcus' voice rose over the staccato fire of guns. "_Tremours!_"

At once, both Adam and the corporal were moving, preparing for the very ground below them to drop out as the shaking rapidly escalated.

"Take cover, sir!" the corporal cried back. "You should be fine up here!"

Adam had never fought frontline during the Locust war, had never seen an Emergence hole that wasn't a full city block away; but he knew what tremours meant, and had seen the devastation they brought. The trembling ground was disorienting, and he scuffled towards the nearest wall for cover. He crouched down in its shadow, middle-aged joints protesting at the action, and watched the stones around him for the tell-tale signs of cracks or sinking earth.

"Keep it together, Gears!" Marcus called evenly to the men lined up beside him. "Keep it together!"

For a surreal instant, the frantic scene seemed to mute itself, with even the grubs giving a moment's hesitation, and then the quake reached its jarring peak. Adam scanned the leveled stairs below, blue eyes darting in a desperate effort to foresee the danger, when he caught a flash of movement by the huge fountain at the courtyard's very bottom. The copper gear at the fountain's head was vibrating. A breath later, and the entire monument cracked back at an angle before collapsing completely.

"Shit..." Marcus hissed. "Shit!"

Suddenly the lower grounds had become a roiling ocean; the stones pulsing and cracking as if the earth below them had deflated. Then, a nightmarish shriek struck clean through the air, and the courtyard stone gave way to eight thrashing, behemoth legs.

The Corpser moved like a mountain brought to life; hulking, shaking spider-flesh that clambered slowly over the rubble of its own Emergence hole, legs hooking at the cobblestone in wide arcs. All around it, the ground crumbled and collapsed to reveal another wave of grubs.

"Dad! _Dad!_"

Adam spun around, squinting through the gunpowder air. Marcus was ducking into cover behind the adjacent wall; with a start, Adam realized his son had the Hammer of Dawn's targeting laser in his grasp.

"We gotta bring the Hammer down on that Corpser!" the sergeant called over. "We won't make it otherwise!"

Adam had no idea how or why his son had come to be in the possession of the tool of devastation, but a stray bullet pinging off the brick by his ear reminded him it hardly mattered. "But we don't have satellite relay from the CIC." The professor grimaced. "You'll have no way of knowing when the Hammer will come online!"

Marcus' cold gaze swept slowly over his father's worry-wrinkled face, then down at the targeter in his hands. He gave an unceremonious sniff.

"Okay, then guide me."

It took several precious seconds for Adam to fully comprehend what his son was suggesting. He balked. "_Guide_ you...Marcus, I can't—"

"You used to say you had every cycle of those sats memorized, Dad." Marcus interrupted. "Now's the time to put those numbers to good use."

The men hunched down as the Corpser released another eardrum-shattering shriek. Adam sneaked a look over the cover of the low wall; instead of climbing back down into its emergence hole like usual, the Locust monster had started dragging its colossal weight up the stairs. The Gears might have been able to fend off the drones, but as the Corpser shredded its way through a hundred years of stone and metalwork, it was clear there was no other way.

"Alright," Adam nodded grimly. "_Listen closely_."

Twenty years later, and those words still triggered his son to snap up and pay attention like no other. Adam took a deep breath, then squinted out at the rolling grey sky.

"If the sats are still running on the same schedules they used to, then we should have had coverage for some time now. But the weather...Look there: there's a break in cloud cover to the north and blowing down fast—do you see it? That might be enough of a clearing for the Hammer to come online, but if it does, you'll have seconds at the most. At the _most_, Marcus. You'll get one chance at painting the target...if we're lucky."

The sergeant dipped his chin to show his perfect understanding. "You just say when, okay?"

"Yes, okay."

A couple stairways down, Dom was shouting encouragement to his fellow soldiers and effectively helping to stave off the onslaught of grubs. His Lancer rattled out the last of its clip; in the moment it took to reload, the corporal stole a glance up at Marcus. Seeing his friend sighting up with the Hammer, he appeared to mouth a silent _"shit yeah"_ of anticipation before turning back to the fray. That was always something Adam had admired the Santiago boy endlessly for: his unflinching loyalty to those he held dear. Sadly, the professor realized that that loyalty likely stemmed from the fact that nearly everyone Dom had held dear was gone now.

Marcus was all he had left; him, and the flame of hope he kept alive for poor Maria.

The ground shook with the Corpser's staggering approach; the gap of sun among the clouds was nearly upon the desperate battlefield. Adam crouched at Marcus' side, but the hard bulk of the sergeant's armour made it difficult to lean in too closely.

"God, Marcus, be careful," Adam muttered, unable to keep the anxious strain from his tone. "Make sure there are no Gears in the blast radius. And _remember_, you only get one shot at—"

Marcus shook his shoulders irritably; it might have looked like a mere shifting of stiff muscles under the jointed steel pauldrons, but Adam recognized it as his son's clear signal to _back off_. Marcus had mastered the gesture when he was just a boy.

"I know, Dad. Give me some space."

Adam grit his teeth, frustrated by his own hovering doubts. _Come on, this isn't new. I was a major, damn it_. Taking in a bracing breath, the professor dropped his head and thought back to his days as a frontline Gear. "Look, just...try to relax. Drop your shoulders. Breathe."

It felt like something a man might say to his young boy during their first casual outing to a shooting range, but it sounded wholly unfamiliar coming from Adam's own lips. He'd never taught Marcus how to shoot; he'd let the army take care of that instead.

"Steady, son...Steady..." He wasn't even sure the younger Gear was hearing him now. It might have been over a decade since he'd seen action, but Adam knew well the tunneling vision and narrowing focus that came with crucial aiming. He kept a watchful gaze trained on the approaching cloud break; only moments remained. Marcus would be ready.

Then, in an instant of natural brilliance, rays of sun pierced the low cloud cover, setting the desolate scene alight with gold fire. Adam touched Marcus' shoulder.

"_Now_."

Marcus began aligning the target before the syllable had even ended. Five narrow ruby lines streaked through the smoke, dancing tentatively before converging neatly on the Corpser's rearing bulbous head. And then the air itself exploded.

Adam had his knees braced, but he was still blown back on his heels by the sheer force of the Hammer strike, the light of its column of searing destruction branding through his closed lids. He half expected the same to happen to Marcus, but the sergeant remained steadfast, his hands maintaining his target.

There was no scream of immolated drones, only the continuous, mind-numbing roar of the Hammer, tinged with the Corpser's strangled death shriek. When Marcus' finger finally peeled off the trigger, the booming beam simply evaporated into the air, leaving swirling smoke and fracturing debris in its echoing wake.

"Ha-_hah!_ God damn it, Marcus, you did it!"

Dom was bounding up from the lower level, boots clearing three stairs at a time. He skidded to a halt and gave Marcus a vicious congratulatory shake. His cheeks were still red from the Hammer's blast of heat. "I mean, I'll kill you myself if you ever bring one down that close again, but _shit_, that was awesome."

Adam thought briefly of giving Marcus a shoulder squeeze of similar praise, but thought better of it; the sergeant was probably still jumpy from calling the strike. Adam settled for a tired nod.

"Well done, my boy."

For a heartbeat, Marcus just looked mildly stunned, staring blankly at his father, before swallowing.

"Well done yourself," he mumbled.

But before his lips could crack even the scantest ghost of a smile, yet another round of gunfire tore holes in the moment, and all three men buckled back down behind the wall. Dom groaned, reaching up to blind-fire over the bullet-riddled stone slab. "Damn, more of them?"

"Guess we didn't close that E-hole after all," Marcus snarled, then leaned around over the stairs.

"Gears!" he bellowed down at the handful of remaining soldiers on the lower level; thankfully, their squad didn't look any thinner than it had upon their arrival. The blue-eyed helmets twisted around to watch the sergeant. "Regroup and get ready to high-tail it! We can't hold this position much longer."

"High-tail it?" Adam pressed, frowning. "Marcus, I can't leave. My research..."

"Don't know what to tell you. We don't have the firepower to hold the estate; simple as that." Marcus was instantly cold and professional; the seamless flip was somehow disconcerting. "If I keep us out here much longer, I'm going to start losing people."

It was hard to miss the possessive seriousness in the younger Gear's voice. Adam marveled distantly; Marcus had fought by these men for only a few short minutes, and he was already holding himself responsible for their lives.

Then, an approaching sound tugged all their eyes to the sky; the rapid chopping of air. Seemingly from nowhere, the gloriously familiar black hull of a King Raven emerged from the low clouds, its rotor blades churning up the smoke from the Hammer strike. By some miracle, it seemed someone else had heard the professor's pleading SOS. However, a twinge in Adam's gut told him that these new Gears were here to evac, not to dig in and defend.

Gratefully taking the KR's appearance as their unofficial recall, the helmeted Gears pulled back and made their way to the impromptu LZ in the Fenixes' front yard. Adam trotted after them, wanting to beg them to help him protect his research from the grubs at his heels, but he knew he had no right. The endless data stashed away in his basement had always been his responsibility, and his responsibility alone.

The KR slowly descended towards the cobblestone. The resulting windstorm buffeted the walls of the ancient Fenix estate; to Adam's horror, one of the cracks in the facade split wide, and the masonry gave a dying groan. One whole wall seemed to buckle slightly, shaking dust onto the dead lawn below.

"Damn it, I should have seen this..." Adam growled. His feet began moving on autopilot, taking him towards the estate's regal doors. "A Hammer strike this close will have weakened the house; I need to get in there..."

A massive gloved hand took Adam firmly by the elbow. The professor reeled, finding himself pinned down by two scalding blue eyes. "Dad, forget it!" Marcus yelled. "The research can't be that important. We're alive, and we're _going_."

_Not _that_ important? Oh, Marcus..._ Of course, the boy didn't know about the hidden door in the wine cellar; the secrets embedded in his own childhood dwelling. The web of those dark truths was getting so thick, Adam was afraid he would never be able to pull the sticky strings apart.

"No, son, you...you don't understand. I need to go back, I need to save—"

"Dad. _Dad_. There's no time. Just this once, I'm asking you to forget about the goddamn research." Marcus' eyes flared with hot desperation, and there was a note in his deep voice that Adam didn't recognize. "Please just come with me. _Please_."

Adam looked long into his son's face, worn thin with exhaustion and frustration. He opened his mouth in another attempt to explain, but he knew deep down that the time for words had passed. Giving his head a single apologetic shake, Adam wrenched his arm out of Marcus' grip and rushed off to the house as quick as his aging muscles would allow.

Suddenly, there was a muffled cry of _"Boom."_ Before anyone could even duck down, the KR's tail was engulfed in a hellish fireball. Scalding heat bloomed on Adam's face, and he watched, stunned, as the blazing bird spiralled out of control just metres off the ground.

It swung right over him.

He felt the explosive impact of metal on stone, felt the tremours of cracking beams and brickwork; but in that final instant, he could hear only one thing.

The agonized voice of his son, screaming for him, as an avalanche of obliterated estate wall hurtled him down into blackness.

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


	14. VII: Fiction, Part One

**VII.  
>Fiction<br>**(Part One)

_were we torn apart  
>by the break of day?<br>you're more than I can believe  
>would ever come my way.<em>

For the first short hours, every moment seemed to slip away like leaves in a dark stream: blink, and a dozen would pass you by. But now time had settled, and the minutes slowed back to a more comprehensible pace. There was only the thump of Anya's heartbeat, the sound of Marcus' breathing, and the endless ticking of the clock on the dresser across the room.

Anya's bedroom was nearly pitch black; she had a hard time sleeping otherwise. The only illumination came from the narrow shards of moonlight that spilled around the edges of the heavy curtains. The glow was dim and pale, bleached by the snow that had been falling for days on end. But it wasn't the clean white light of winter that Anya had grown up loving; this early morning, it had a tarnished, brassy hue. It had been like that for years now, ever since the Hammer strikes. Sera's winters had never truly recovered from the fallout.

Distantly, Anya was reminded of the first night after the strikes. There had been no snow, but instead a sky clotted with an entire world's worth of ashes. The air still had the eerie, blanketing hush that the first snows of the year always brought, and it was was almost worse than the original deafening blasts of the Hammer had been. Those who had survived in Ephyra had been under twenty-six hour indoor curfew until the black-streaked astmosphere became breathable again—not that anyone wanted to go out into that silent, windless storm. The suffocating sheets of ash were bad enough, but thinking about what—and who—those ashes came from was so much worse.

And despite the storm of war, death and grief that ebbed and swirled endlessly beyond that window, at this exact moment in time, the world was perfect.

She lay motionless under the sheets; such perfection was fragile. If she shifted, if she moved at all, it might crack like precious glass in her hands, like so many other moments like it before.

When it came to her and the sergeant, that was simply the nature of the beast.

All she could do was close her eyes and make sure to drink in every detail. The kiss of well-worn sheets against her bare skin; the strong arm that cradled her head; the slow, steady breath against the nape of her neck.

Marcus was sprawled on his back, his massive frame taking up most of the mattress real estate. Anya mimicked his lazy pose, overlapping him like one book fallen over another. Her hips leaned over his, and the brutish rock of his right shoulder gave her something to rest her head on, even if it wasn't nearly as comfortable as her well-worn pillow.

The bed itself was a mess; the sheets had become a tumultuous sea of white cotton, hopelessly churned up by the night's endeavours. They'd long ago thrown off the oppressive down-filled duvet, exposing their fevered skin to the chill air to cool down. Anya's poor circulation had eventually forced her to retreat back under the covers, but Marcus was a furnace as always, and his body heat was something to be thankful for in these wicked winter nights. Anya leaned against the naked chest at her back, shivering as the burning skin came into contact with hers.

_ We've lost track of time again. I wonder..._

She tilted her head as stealthily as she could; if Marcus caught her looking at the clock, he would be reminded of the existence of time, and that would likely prove disastrous. Atop the oak dresser across the room, the red digits 3:53 were branded in the dark. Anya felt her stomach give a little twinge; this was the latest Marcus had ever stayed.

To her despair, the tiny shift in her posture did not go unnoticed.

"You awake?"

_ Damn._

The sergeant's voice was hoarse, and their physical closeness made the two words rumble throughout her entire body.

"Yeah," Anya replied, wishing she knew what her lover's thoughts were. Of course, she knew what her own were, but she didn't dare speak them out loud.

_No, Marcus, I'm not asleep._

_ I'm afraid to, because every time I do, I wake up to an empty bed._

Sighing, she reached back with her free hand to the hard thigh that rested just behind her own, then began to trace absent-minded patterns over Marcus' skin. It was impossible to tell if a Gear was ever truly relaxed or not; the sinewy muscles that bound their superhuman bodies made their skin permanently taught, as if constantly tense with pain or stress. It had been one of the things Anya had been forced to get used to over the years.

Of course, small touches like these were the most she was allowed. Anya had learned to abandon the usual methods of feminine wile early on. Flirty winks and blushing giggles might have sent most men into giddy drooling tailspins, but things like that only seemed to disturb Marcus. She had always resisted being too overt in her affections, paranoid that her fellow Gear would think her childish—or worse, just a silly lovesick girl—but it was hard. And nights like this were the worst for it.

But the Gear at her back tolerated the tiny show of physical attention without complaint. It was generally the most Anya could hope for, especially after the sort of day Marcus had suffered through before arriving on her doorstep. Even on the rare occasions that she wasn't on comms duty for Delta, she could always tell when something horrible had happened on his squad's shift. A teammate gunned down, the loss of entire districts, a particularly tragic civilian death; any of these things sent Marcus straight into her arms, eyes dark and needing.

It seemed a sad irony that the nights when he wanted her most were when he was most deeply damaged. Last night had been one of those times. If only he'd had an easier day; then maybe he might have been left a bit more open to the warmth she was so deeply willing to give.

_If only..._

The lieutenant stopped herself before her mind could wander further, admonishing herself for being fanciful. In Marcus and Anya's case, the _if only_ game was just too painful. Some lovers only had a few obstacles to overcome on the road to happiness; if only your father approved of my job, if only I could afford to move closer to you. But for Anya and Marcus, they stacked up all too easily. If only he wasn't an enlisted man; if only she wasn't barren; if only E-Day had never come.

_If only_ they weren't so bent and cold from the immeasurable weight of loss and responsibility that the simple concept of love was all but incomprehensible to them.

In some sad part of her heart, she knew they had it wrong. This—whatever the hell _this_ was—should have freed them. The hours they spent together should have been a relief; the one source of comfortable warmth in a world that had long ago gone stiff and grey. They should have been running headlong into these encounters, giving and taking pleasure from the one place where it was free and in endless supply.

Regret settled over Anya, cold and cumbersome as the snows outside; it distracted her so effectively that the sudden voice at her back made her jump.

"What time is it?" Marcus murmured.

Anya screwed her eyes closed, shutting out the disappointment that barreled down on her.

_That's what I get for hoping_.

"Four," she said after a pause, then rolled over onto to her stomach so she could bury her crestfallen expression in the pillow.

Her back had been accustomed to the blaze of Marcus' body heat, and now goosebumps ran rampant across the skin; she had only the tangled golden cascade of her hair to ward against the brisk air.

Just as she began to shiver, something grazed her shoulders. It was Marcus, carding his fingers through her tousled mane. She almost never released it from its standard immaculate bun—most times, she even kept it tied up as she slept—but Marcus seemed to prefer her hair down. It was always his opening move, gently tugging her tresses free so that they tumbled over her shoulders like a blonde waterfall.

Now, her hair was once again the focus of his rare attention. He gently gathered the strands up off her shoulders, revealing her vulnerable neck, and, in an instant that was entirely unlike the quiet soldier, bent his head down to hers and inhaled the soft, clean scent of her locks.

His weight suddenly shifted, and he was hovering over the pale expanse of her naked back, arms driving into the mattress on either side of her like corded pillars.

"Marcus..."

She felt his breath on the base of her skull, followed by the press of his lips as he kissed the sensitive skin there. Her nerves thrilled at the touch, so intimate and unexpected, but it didn't stop there. Slowly, he began to move down her body, planting hard kisses along the elegant curve of her spine as he went. It was unfair, Anya thought distantly, how her affections had such weak effect on the sergeant, but the faintest glimmer of attention from him set her whole body on fire. As his mouth roamed down her back, early-morning stubble rasping on her milky skin, it was all she could do to stifle the moan of longing she felt rising in her belly.

_ Oh God, stay with me. Please, just stay._

At last, he reached the very base of her spine, and just as Anya felt she could hold back no longer, he stopped. Her breath came shallow, hardly daring to budge a muscle as she waited on her lover's next move. His head dropped down to the small of her back, pausing for a long, near-reverent moment.

And then, just as quickly as he'd come over her, the pleasurable weight of his body was gone, leaving her exposed to the cold draft of the room. Before Anya could even whimper in complaint, the jangle of a heavy belt buckle reached her ears, and her stomach sank with somber understanding.

"I have patrol," came the low grumble, and her fears were cemented.

The lieutenant rolled over to face the side of her bed. She watched, stunned to silence, as Marcus deftly buckled his fatigues and set to searching out his other discarded articles of clothing.

"You just got _off_ patrol."

Marcus grunted, suddenly very preoccupied with getting dressed. "Took the double shift." His reply was muffled as he yanked his black tee from the previous day down over his bulky shoulders.

"Oh."

Anya bit back on her disappointment. _Of course you did, Marcus_. There was always a patrol to start, a rookie to drill, a kit to clean. But it was the first word that hurt; _took_. No one ever forced Sergeant Fenix to take the back-to-back patrols, to put in the extra hours. He was always the first to volunteer, Anya knew. His life was resolutely devoted to everyone but himself. _Everyone but her._

A hard lump of pointless jealousy began to form in Anya's throat, but she cleared it before it could take root. The lieutenant sat up in the bed, gathering the sheets meekly to her naked breast.

"Do...do you want to grab breakfast, then?"

"...At four in the morning?"

The answer struck blunt, even if he didn't mean it to.

"Okay, maybe not," Anya could feel herself running out of straws to grasp for. "I just thought..."

Focusing now to the task of buckling up one massive boot, the leather groaning with the cold, Marcus hunched one shoulder in a painfully dismissive gesture. "Don't worry about it, I can grab something in the mess on my way in."

_ Come on, Marcus. Give me _something_..._

His determination was all too clear. Anya simply tucked a hair behind her ear and went to swing her legs over the side of the bed. At the very least, she'd demand he get at least one cup of coffee in him before taking off. She was sure there were still a few packets of instant coffee in the cupboards of her cramped kitchen...

She felt a rough hand press into her thigh, preventing her from sliding out of bed. Glancing up, she was thwarted again by that distant blue stare.

"I can see myself out, Anya. Don't trouble yourself," Marcus said quietly. He had his coat thrown over his arm, a leather bomber jacket with a fur-lined hood. It looked relatively new; Anya hadn't even noticed he'd worn it in last night. "You've gotta be up in a couple hours too. Get some sleep."

He turned to leave. For the hundredth time since that very first night, Marcus was running before dawn, and every step he took towards the door was another bitter tug on Anya's heart. The brass knob on the door clicked open, and the familiar sound triggered a startling loneliness deep in the pit of the woman's stomach. Before she could catch herself, her eyes clamped shut and her hand shot out into the frigid air between them.

"Marcus. Wait."

The Gear looked back. Just as always, his face was a mask of unreadable neutrality. He pressed his lips together, saying nothing, and Anya's mind was blank, except for a single thought.

_Don't go_.

In the haste of Anya's outburst, the thin sheets had crumpled into her lap, and she was left with nothing on but her COG tags. Even if it was nothing the sergeant hadn't seen before, instinct told her to wrap her arms protectively around herself, to blush and look away and mumble an apology. But she resisted the urge, only lowered her head and let her hair fall limp over her eyes.

The room was doused in painful silence, until the creak of boot on aging wood broke it. A heartbeat later, and a hand touched her jaw.

Reluctantly, she met her lover's wintery eyes: they were caught in a look halfway between guilty longing and simple exhaustion. He'd been awake for well over twenty-six hours, but even beyond that, her wistful affection had always seemed to pain him. For a short while, he studied her, brows knit in a way that could have meant concern, or just confusion. In spite of her exposed state, his gaze never strayed to her bare skin.

He remained silent as his hand fell from her delicate jawline. Fingertips, thick with callouses, grazed down her neck and along her collarbone; retracing the paths of similar caresses from earlier in the night. Anya couldn't understand how something that felt so sweet could hurt so badly.

He leaned down, as if to plant another kiss like before, but none came. There was only the soft rustle of cotton as he lifted the sheets from her lap, then wrapped them loosely around her gently shivering shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Anya," came the rough half-whisper, close enough to feel his breath. She winced. "Stay warm, okay?"

She didn't watch him go. Her lids remained closed as she listened to the thump of boots outside in the narrow hallway, followed by the muffled clunk of the front door closing as Marcus escaped out into the snowy dark. Once again, she was alone.

Under the meagre protection of the bedsheets, her fingers trailed down the valley between her breasts where her COG tags lay, warmed by her own body heat. Closing her eyes, she recalled the sensation of his laboured breath on the skin there, even hotter than the metal of her tags. She realized that those rare moments were the closest she would ever come to seeing Marcus Fenix's walls come completely down.

There would be no loving whispers, no passionate confessions, no hands laced tightly beneath the covers; and, as he had made so clear tonight, no nights spent asleep in each other's arms.

And with a throat-tightening pang, Anya finally accepted that, if it had to be him, then it had to be like this.

And it had to be him.

She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them, head laid flat as she stared blindly at the clock. Of course, Marcus couldn't have known, but she had been the officer to arrange the week's patrols. And she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Marcus' squad didn't go on patrol until the next day.

_ It had to be you._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I **_**told**_** you I wasn't done writing these. Buckle up.  
><strong>


	15. VII: Fiction, Part Two

**AN: **_The concept for this Hymn was written a long time ago, back before The Slab had been announced, so it's based off my own headcanon of Marcus' experience in prison (aka my other fic, Hound). Apologies for the obvious inconsistencies!**  
><strong>_

* * *

><p><strong>VII.<br>Fiction  
><strong>(Part Two)

_come via light;  
>why do I refuse you?<br>'cause if my fear's right  
>I risk to lose you.<em>

"You don't have to lurk in the doorway all night."

The words were quiet in the empty silence of the sergeants' mess on Vectes, but they still made Anya jump nearly out of her skin. She wondered how long he'd known she was there, standing like the shy kid in class by the entrance, before finally acknowledging her. Her face began to burn with embarrassment, and she was grateful he hadn't turned around at the bar to look at her yet.

"Sorry, Marcus. I wasn't sure if you wanted company or not."

_Hell, I never am_. These days, it was always easier to assume the sergeant would rather have his free time to himself. Sighing inwardly, Anya finally allowed herself to cross the threshold into the mess proper. It had been mere months ago that the COG had constructed this hall on Vectes Island for Gears to meet with their buddies over a trayful of pints; a genuinely happy place amid a whole world of _miserable_. But something about all the empty chairs and tables made the place seem far less friendly than when it was brimming over with warm friends and even warmer hooch.

Anya approached the bar, her boots just a little too noisy on the greying floorboards, and slid onto the plum-coloured leather barstool beside the lone sergeant. He glanced at her sidelong, then gestured vaguely to the sparse collection of half-empty bottles on the shelf behind the bar.

"Want something?"

"I'm alright, thanks." It was a self-serve sort of deal here; in the dim light of the low-hanging lamps, Anya could see Marcus had already helped himself to a glass of something rust-coloured. The lieutenant herself had never managed to build up a resistance to the throat-scalding moonshine that Dizzy home-brewed.

"Bit late for a drink, don't you think?" Anya remarked half-heartedly, checking her barely-functioning watch. The grimy square face blinked the red numbers 0249 back up at her. "Or early, I guess."

The sergeant just shrugged. "Five o'clock somewhere."

It was a tired old cliché to justify drinking; usually, the more generic Marcus' brush-offs were, the further his mind was from the present place and time. No one knew what the real reason for him sneaking off to the mess at such an hour was, but Anya guessed it probably had something to do with clearing thoughts that could only be safely resurrected when there was no one else around.

Anya swallowed. She wished she had the willpower to control it, but just like always, she found herself watching him from the corner of her eye. He stared straight ahead as he nursed his drink, ice blue eyes half-lidded. His posture was less stiff than it was during daylight hours, his breathing slow and his shoulders resting easy under the furred hood of his bomber jacket.

It was probably only due to the fact that he was grateful to be out from under the leaden weight of his armour plating, but a sliver of Anya's heart found itself hoping that he might actually feel relaxed around her again. In the long, exhausting months since the sinking of Jacinto, the silences between them had become more comfortable, calming even. Sometimes, those quiet moments were even warmed with the odd conversation. It wasn't much, but the words seemed to come a little easier every time, and nowadays, that was all Anya needed.

They must have sat for minutes, each too lost in the inner workings of their own minds to even notice the growing silence, before Anya saw something that distracted her from her sullen thoughts. More than that, it _scared_ her.

Marcus wasn't wearing gloves. Whether he was on duty back in Jacinto, or ghosting around Vectes on his off hours, he always had some sort of gloves on. Due to the island's humid climate, most Gears had abandoned their standard issue armoured gauntlets for lighter pairs that gave them full use of their hands, Marcus included. But for whatever reason, he didn't have them now; Anya realized she couldn't remember the last time that happened. And yet, it wasn't his bare hands that sent a jolt of cold apprehension down her spine.

It was the stark web of long, thin scars that covered the backs of them, their spidery lines trickling over his knuckles and down between his fingers.

"Shit, Marcus," Anya whispered before she could reel herself back from the edge of her own surprise. She couldn't believe it had taken her this long to notice. "What the hell gave you _those?_"

For a few moments, the Gear acted like he hadn't heard, though his subtle shift in posture suggested he'd sensed her dismay before she'd even spoken. Then he sighed, left his glass on the bar and raised one of the scarred hands in question. He grunted as he surveyed the twisted knots on the knuckles, eyebrows raised slightly as if he were seeing the scars for the first time.

"Long story," he stated quietly. He made a solid fist with the wounded hand, causing the white lines of dead flesh to stretch and warp over the bones. His jaw muscle was twitching slightly; for a scant moment, it almost seemed like he wanted to scratch the surface of that story. But he only cleared his throat and rotated his wrist a few times.

"But no real damage done..." Anya winced at the sound of the sergeant's wrist joints popping as he demonstrated his point. "So I guess it doesn't really matter anyways."

He swiftly dropped the hand back down to the bar and retrieved his drink to emphasize the _over-ness_ of the conversation. But in the dim light of the mess hall, Anya had recognized something that scared the hell out of her. She might have spent the majority of her time holed up in a dark CIC room, but she knew the difference between bullet wounds and _something else_.

"Those are knife wounds, aren't they Marcus?"

The sergeant didn't even glance over as he took another swallow from his drink. "So maybe I've come across a lot of angry assholes with knives."

"Maybe before E-Day," Anya countered, trying to recall if the UIR forces had ever been known for wielding blades during the Pendulum Wars. She knew the Locust sure as hell didn't. "These...these are fresher than that. I could swear you didn't have them before..."

The lieutenant cut herself off before she could say it and remind him of that horrible black stain on his past. Whether she understood it or not, the Slab was a wound Marcus was still licking; too deep, too tender, and too recent for anyone else to touch yet. Not even her. Mentally berating herself, Anya prayed she'd stopped herself in time.

The look on his face told her she hadn't even come close.

"Like I said," he murmured sourly. "A lot of angry assholes with knives."

Understanding hit Anya like a Ticker blast, and she found herself feeling suddenly repulsed. She had seen everything—unspeakable acts of cruelty, senseless brutality, violence on a purely incomprehensible scale. So why, then, did the thought of some criminal thug from the Slab digging a knife into Marcus' bare knuckles make her sick to her stomach?

It happened before she could stop herself; she reached out and grasped one of his scarred hands with both of hers.

Instantly, they both froze, equally startled by what had just occurred. Anya resisted the overwhelming urge to jerk her hands away and mumble a sheepish apology, but left her grasp light enough that he could pull away if he wanted to.

He never did. Deep down, she hadn't expected him to; he was immune to knee-jerk responses like that. He carefully set his glass down on the dark wood, eyes fixed hazily on the tarnished beer taps before him. Anya held her breath: his hand remained motionless on the bar top, but it didn't soften to her touch. Subconsciously, she curled her fingers a little tighter, but the hand under her palms only stiffened.

_Goddamn it._ A scream of frustration burst soundlessly in Anya's chest. Screw it all; she wanted to kiss those scars, to press his calloused hands to her chest, over her quickening heart, and just _hold_ them there. Her hands felt so safe inside his, but it was agonizingly obvious that her own touch didn't offer him the same.

_ What _happened_ to us?_

The lieutenant closed her eyes. Reluctantly, she allowed her hands to slip into her own lap, where she knew they belonged.

Marcus blew a long breath through his nose as if he'd been holding it; she didn't know if it was more a gesture of relief or worry. "Anya..."

In spite of herself, Anya glanced up at the sergeant. That one jaw muscle was working overtime, and his brows were furrowed in an expression of mild concern. He wanted to say something, Anya knew; she just wasn't sure if she wanted to hear it.

Unable to resist the need to just_ get away_, the woman tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and rose from the stool.

"I should go." The rushed cop-out was as truthful as it was lame: she couldn't be in that mess hall anymore; she had to get out. Marcus was avoiding her eyes; she thought she might have seen something in his face, maybe a ripple of reluctance to let her flee, but she chased the notion away. _Wishful thinking_...

"Anya, wait."

_Damn it, Marcus, just let me run away_.

This would be what hurt the most, she knew; the final nail in the coffin. As desperately as she wanted to bolt, there was simply no way she could walk away from him know, even if the words he was working up to say would set her whole world on its head. She froze, but facing him was too much to bear.

"Just...stay."

Anya was so steeled for disappointment that the sergeant's words barely registered. When they did, the muscles in her legs began to feel a bit rubbery, and she held her breath. He seemed to be biting back on his words, chewing each one over before speaking.

"I know I have no right to ask you that," he confessed bitterly.

It felt like there was something more the sergeant wanted to say, but if there was, he wrestled it down, letting the statement hang suspended in the air.

At last, she brought herself to look at him, but he seemed just as unnerved by eye contact as she was. Cautiously, she laid a hand on the sleeve of his bomber jacket.

"Marcus..." she began, focusing on the texture of the worn leather rather than the silent man before her. Memories of the past five years strobed through her head, and she had a difficult time knowing where to begin. So much had been left unsaid.

"The day Dom brought you back from the Slab...it was like you'd come back from the dead."

It was painfully true. For literal months after Marcus' return, he'd felt like a ghost to her—intangible, unreachable—and she couldn't help but treat him as such. She remembered the moment she'd seen him, as they emerged from their respective Ravens in the middle of Embry Square. It had been four long years, but she had still recognized him from his walk alone: that slow, easy swagger that came from a lifetime of moving in bulky armour plates, with shoulders back and strong chin lowered...

Marcus made a small grumbling noise in his throat, pulling her from her reverie.

"You're tellin' me."

She examined his roughened features then, gauging his reaction as carefully as she knew how. His jaw was still sawing a bit, but she could see his brows were knitting as that rare _overwhelmed_ look crept over him.

Her lids drooped, remembering. Maybe it would have been better to lay it all out in the open that day, to rush across that dangerous stretch of pavement in the Square and throw her arms around him right then and there. Hoffman would have probably had her publicly flogged, but maybe it would have saved time. Because here they were: more than a year later, and still drifting around each other like damned ghosts.

"I don't know what I'm trying to say," Anya sighed. "It's just that...I_ lost _you."

Suddenly, the sergeant shook his head; a harsh, jerking movement that surprised Anya.

"No."

Anya's lips parted, unable to respond. Her fellow Gear just gave his head another angry shake and continued. "I was the one who screwed up, and _I_ lost _you_. Not the other way around."

In the next moment, Marcus' expression of glacial calm cracked, and he winced like he was fishing a bullet out of his flesh. His next three words sunk through the air with a mournful acceptance that slashed at Anya's heartstrings. It was as if he were saying them for the first time, and only now realizing their repercussions.

"I lost you."

The lieutenant hesitated for a moment, more out of habit than actual trepidation, then reached out to graze Marcus' bare hand once again. Predictably, he tensed, but his actions seemed just as much force of habit as her own, and it wasn't long before she felt him relax to her touch. Moving as carefully as someone trying to catch a startled animal, Anya moulded her hand to his, fingers brushing the delicate scars on his knuckles as if they might still cause him pain.

"Never," she said solemnly. "_Never_."

No one moved. The pair was paralyzed by the visceral reminder of the closeness they had once shared, seemingly a lifetime ago. They might not have had much, and what little they'd made together had been worn to tattered threads over the years, but the pieces were still there.

And they were worth salvaging.

"...Stay the night with me, Marcus."

The sergeant glanced up at her; a little too quickly to hide his mild surprise. She knew he was well aware of the private officers' quarters Hoffman had secured for her upon their arrival to Vectes. He knew, even if he'd never asked to visit. His blue eyes had that thousand-yard haze to them as he surveyed her, then strayed off to simply stare into space.

"You still want me."

It wasn't a question so much as a mere statement, quiet and tinged with a mild, disbelieving sadness.

Again, he broke Anya's heart, and the absurdity of it all made her want to laugh and sob at the same time.

"Are you _kidding_ me? Why the hell would I give up on you now?" She gave the hand beneath her own a vicious squeeze. "God, Marcus, you might be the most frustrating man on Sera, but damned if that isn't why I _love_ you."

There it was, the word that they'd dodged their entire lives. But she refused to give it special status, nor would she let him be surprised by it. Anya was done with hiding her heart.

A blanket of apprehensive silence fell over the mess hall, then Marcus' jacket rustled as he stood; a gradual, unhurried movement. She studied his turning face, waiting for his reply, if there was to be any at all. But when he met her gaze, the look in his wintery blues said he had no more use for words, and his response came as action instead.

Before Anya could fully comprehend it, the sergeant had stepped in so that he loomed over her, and then she was in his arms, his mouth warm against hers.

The first moments were slow, hesitant. But then the spark of deep physical familiarity was struck, and Anya kissed him back with all the ferocious love she had to give. Her heart throbbed as he returned in kind, crushing her to his barrel chest and bearing down on her. At some point, she felt the hardened gash in his lip—one of the many scars he refused to speak of—but it didn't scare her anymore, and she kissed the wound with wolfish acceptance. He was just as she remembered him, scars be damned. No matter what marks the world carved into him, no matter where it dragged him off to, he was still _hers_.

The kiss broke, reluctantly, and the two Gears simply touched their brows together, breathing to steady themselves amid the electrifying fallout of the past several minutes. For whatever reason, Anya was reminded of the first night they spent together, all those years ago in her apartment after the Embry Star award ceremony. It was as if something old and well-worn had fallen back into place, settling with a silent and comforting clunk.

"Okay," Anya gave a hitched sigh, still wrapped up in her soldier's heavy embrace. She couldn't even bring herself to open her eyes. "Just one condition tonight."

Marcus' arms tightened around her in a way that said he was ready to agree to any terms.

"Stay," she whispered into his neck. "You have to _stay_."

Lids still shut, Anya felt a cool hand touch to her cheek, cradling the side of her face in a gesture she had all but forgotten. When Marcus spoke, his voice was barely a hoarse rumble in his throat.

"Deal."

* * *

><p><em><strong>end.<strong>_


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